“Have you ever heard the story about the world’s greatest watch thief? He was stealing stuff all the time.”
But even this guy might be impressed by the sticky fingers of the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC), a little corner of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that managed to steal nearly $75 million last year funded by taxpayer funds, in addition to the government’s official “Dad Joke” repository.
It’s funny – but not very funny.
The agency’s website is the source of the cringeworthy joke above, as well as other slap-in-the-forehead jokes, such as “Why haven’t you seen elephants hiding in trees? Because they’re really good at it,” and “You’ve seen Have you ever experienced this new type of elephant?
To be fair, the National Strategic Dad Joke Repository (not the real name, sadly) is just one of the NRFC’s responsibilities. The agency’s website offers a range of fun activities for fathers and children to do together, as well as more serious content, such as public service announcements about the importance of being a good father and accessing mental health resources.
But the NRFC is mostly an example of how even well-intentioned government programs can become bloated and wasteful. It was created as part of the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act as a one-stop shop for various fatherhood promotion grant programs administered by multiple federal agencies. The Obama administration reformed the NRFC in 2010, transforming it into “a multifaceted initiative to encourage fathers to be better parents” and promising to “catalyze new conversations about fatherhood in local communities.”
What achievements has the NRFC achieved? It’s hard to tell, it seems to be by design. A 2018 HHS study found that “few rigorous evaluations” have tested the effectiveness of federally funded fatherhood programs. The study noted that “none of the evaluations we analyzed” focused on whether these programs resulted in better outcomes for children, even though improving these outcomes was “the main reason for fathers’ participation in programs.”
There’s nothing inherently wrong with trying to promote good fatherhood, but good intentions don’t lead to effective spending — and the federal government has been “ridiculously ineffective at promoting behavior change through social programs,” Romina Romina Boccia, who highlights taxpayer-funded fatherhood, joked in her Substack newsletter, Debt Schedulingearlier this year.
Even if you’re a fan of dad jokes—or are a practitioner of the art form yourself—this should seem like a pretty silly way to spend your tax dollars. Especially when the federal government runs multi-trillion dollar deficits every year and the national debt exceeds $34.5 trillion, this is no joke.
When it comes to the importance of spending cuts, we can only hope Congress takes a lesson from a joke in the NRFC database: “The man who stayed up all night wondering where the sun went.”
You’ve heard this, right? It finally dawned on him.
