As Elon Musk and his DOGE team throw open the books to uncover corrupt and wasteful spending across the massive federal bureaucracy, they must not overlook the obscure Legal Services Corporation (LSC), a quasi-federal agency which doles out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to a country-wide network of activist “poverty” lawyers. LSC is an anachronism of Great Society radicalism that Congress should have zeroed out decades ago, but lobbyists from the poverty industry and legal profession have skillfully kept Uncle Sam’s money flowing. Today, forcing American taxpayers to continue financing LSC is the equivalent of making them pay for something as outdated as the Rural Electrification Administration.
LSC is something more troubling than a simple waste of taxpayer dollars—it’s a pass-through for money to go to a network of left-wing legal activists. Back in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration made the first valiant, but unsuccessful, effort to defund LSC. Ronald Reagan himself was personally energized for the cause because, while California governor, he had battled constantly with federally funded legal-aid lawyers who sued the state government for their radical agenda.
President Reagan’s unsuccessful effort to defund LSC put the spotlight on a prominent legal-aid activist, then an unknown young lawyer and wife of the governor of Arkansas. Hillary Rodham Clinton served on the LSC board and fought bitterly to save the agency’s bacon, knowing its budget brought in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for left-wing causes. Hillary joined with the usual suspects—big-spenders in Congress and the liberal news media—who mobilized to defend “legal assistance for the poor.” Although Reagan managed to persuade Congress to trim LSC’s budget, federal dollars continued to flow.
The strong case Reagan laid out against LSC a generation ago is still fully valid. Across the country exists a loosely networked hodge-podge of legal-aid groups and associations, of which some 130—called “grantees”—receive federal funds from LSC. In many cases, the employees of these groups are operatives of the self-interested, and permanent, federal bureaucracy. To be fair, some of their individual efforts do assist some indigents, but the “legal assistance to the poor” strategy is cover for guerrilla social activism, pioneered by Edgar S. Cahn. He passed the covert mission to Hillary Clinton, who passed it on to another generation. President Donald Trump and Musk must finally extinguish that dangerous torch.
This legal-aid network, substantially funded by LSC, has a 50-year history of advancing a radical agenda on controversial subjects such as racial preferences, transgenderism, homelessness, illegal immigration, and the growth of the welfare state. Where possible, legal-aid attorneys have sued in court; on other occasions, they have used advocacy tools outside the courthouse. Their efforts, in league with activist judges, have radicalized American society and institutions, undermining values and interests of the vast middle class.
As Trump looks to eliminate wasteful and politicized spending, he needs to pick up where Reagan left off a generation ago, and this time the White House and Congress need to get the job done. While LSC’s total level of federal money is relatively small—about $560 million in 2024—these funds act as invaluable seed and replenishment financing that continually nurtures the network. These groups have many other spigots of funding, it is true, but no other money sources match what comes from the taxpayers.
In circling the wagons, LSC defenders will reprise their arguments from the 1980s. They will assert that Congress has already imposed limitations and strings on LSC funds that restrict legal-aid groups from using taxpayer money for lobbying and certain kinds of courtroom litigation, like class-action lawsuits. However, this argument is thoroughly deceptive because it ignores that all money is fungible, as economists often remind us.
LSC’s hundreds of millions of federal dollars, dispersed annually, pay for basic overhead, salaries, and operational costs of these 130 legal-aid groups. Thus, taxpayer dollars are indirect subsidies for the radical agenda because LSC provides the anchor money from which legal-aid groups can raise other, unrestricted, funds from other sources. Knowing that LSC pays for their core operations, they simply seek out other donors to finance their controversial activism and technically claim it is not federally funded.
Non-federal money comes from left-wing state and local governments and from big institutional foundations, including those run by George Soros. Like lawyers everywhere, legal-aid attorneys bill their work hours to specific funding accounts. Thus, while federal money may not be used for certain individual lawsuits, Uncle Sam is paying for the infrastructure platform of office rent, clerical staff, and ancillary costs.
The answer to this follow-the-money deception is that Congress must end all federal funding to all legal aid. If some individual states seek to fund legal-aid services, then let the legislatures in places like California, New York, and Illinois have at it. Similarly, if attorney and bar associations want to encourage private lawyers and other donors to give financial contributions to legal aid, it is a free country. What is certain is that there are vast sums of private financing available to replace the long-suffering taxpayers. America’s large charities and grant-giving foundations hand out over $600 billion each year. Just the Gates Foundation alone is sitting on more than $50 billion.
It is no surprise that the American Bar Association (ABA) for years has been a big booster of more federal money going to LSC. The more lawsuits the better. When LSC grantees file complaints, the whole lawyering class has more work. It is a magnificent hidden subsidy. In our lumbering legal system, cases drag on for years, and attorney fees pile up. Other professions, for example the American Dental Association, no doubt wish they had an equivalent option to spread around such federal largesse.
LSC is part of the Washington poverty industry that expects to never put itself out of business. In FY2024, LSC officials asked that their budget be tripled to $1.5 billion (Congress refused). Budget-cutters should call on the token Republicans who sit on the LSC board to invite DOGE to come investigate all the money going to grantees. It is long past time that Uncle Sam declared victory and got out of the business of financing radical legal aid.
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