OpinionAlligator Alcatraz Costs $1M a Day. Hard Money Would Have Stopped It.
DHS is reportedly weighing whether to shut down the Florida Everglades immigration detention facility known informally as Alligator Alcatraz because it costs more than $1 million a day to run. The story will be filed as a fiscal squabble between agencies. The deeper story is what happens when a government can spend without natural constraint, and how a hard money standard would have killed the project before the first contract was signed. Fiat is not the neutral medium people imagine. It is the silent subsidy that funds the indefensible.