Estimated Time to Read: 5 minutes
Expansions in government programs are rarely announced as permanent. They are proposed as solutions to urgent problems, framed as matters of critical necessity, and offered as reassurance. They may be crafted to stabilize a crisis, correct a disruption, or address a situation that “demands action now.” The guarantees are familiar: narrow scope, limited duration, temporary by design.
Yet temporary government programs have a curious habit of becoming fixtures in the policy landscape.
This permanence rarely reflects bad faith. It reflects structural incentives, the institutional forces that shape behavior regardless of intent.
The Promise of Impermanence, and the Pull of Permanence
Emergencies compress time and reduce scrutiny. Debate shortens, hedges are dropped, and temporary measures are adopted with broad support. Action feels wise; delay feels irresponsible.
But once codified, policies develop momentum.
Budgets are allocated. Administrative processes are created. Staff are hired. Constituencies form. Expectations adjust. A provisional framework gradually integrates into the everyday business of governance, even after the circumstances that justified its creation have passed.
As economists have warned repeatedly, nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
Welfare Programs: From Safety Net to Structural Dependency
Consider federal welfare programs as an example of impermanence becoming permanence. Programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) were originally framed as emergency food assistance. Over the decades, however, SNAP has grown into one of the largest ongoing federal expenditures, with significant reliance among Texans. More than three million Texas residents, roughly one in nine, now rely on SNAP benefits, a reliance that persists month after month, year after year.
The program continues long after any original emergency justification and illustrates how temporary aid can evolve into a permanent dependency constellation.
Even when SNAP benefits were briefly halted due to a federal funding disruption, the news cycle did not center on program impermanence; it exposed how entrenched dependency has become.
What began as a temporary measure to alleviate hunger in hardship has become an ongoing structural feature of the safety net, and a significant claim on taxpayer dollars.
Corporate Welfare: Film Subsidies and Recurring Incentives
Temporary tax incentives introduced to stimulate economic activity offer another Texas case study. Corporate subsidy programs, such as the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program (TMIIIP), were created to attract film production to the state. Over time, funding for these incentives has ballooned: from modest levels in the early 2000s to hundreds of millions in the biennial budget. This growth reflects a recurring legislative choice to expand, rather than sunset or fundamentally revisit, a program initially pitched as a targeted competitive boost.
Supporters argue these incentives generate jobs and economic growth. Yet the programs continue not because they solved a clearly defined, temporary problem, but because they became institutionalized. Incentives drift from exceptional tools to expected budget line items.
Constitutional Funds: Permanence by Amendment
Another Texas policy trend, often referenced in analyses of constitutional amendments, shows how purpose-specific funds can be locked into the fiscal landscape. Constitutional funds designed for priorities such as infrastructure or education sit outside the regular appropriations process and automatically receive funding year after year once approved by voters. These mechanisms make funding streams effectively permanent, not through biennial legislative persistence but by constitutional design. Structural permanence replaces routine reconsideration.
In each of these examples, the initial rationales reflect substantive policy goals. But political and administrative incentives reward continuation far more than conclusion.
Why Temporary Tends Toward Permanent
Once a government program exists, predictable dynamics emerge:
Agencies defend funding against cuts. Administrators build processes around ongoing appropriations. Legislators avoid disruptive reversals, especially once vested interests emerge. Recipients begin to expect continuity as a matter of course. Sunset provisions invite extension rather than enforcement.
Programs accumulate stakeholders with a vested interest in continuation. Termination becomes politically fraught and administratively complex, while expansion or renewal is familiar and comparatively easy.
This dynamic is not unique to Texas or to any single party. It is structural.
Economists describe this phenomenon as a policy ratchet effect. Expansions happen quickly under concentrated pressure, while contractions face diffuse resistance. Inertia grows. Layering replaces reconsideration.
Temporary by Name, Permanent by Practice
What is introduced as temporary becomes standard:
Welfare programs designed as safety nets become long-term support systems. Economic incentives introduced to spur short-term activity become recurring budget commitments. Funding mechanisms built for specific purposes become entrenched through constitutional design.
The problem is not that these policies are misguided. The problem is that impermanence is rarely engineered into policy life cycles.
Designing for Exit, Not Just Entry
A free society depends not merely on well-intended laws but on realistic policy frameworks that account for human behavior and institutional incentives.
Temporary programs require credible exit mechanisms, enforceable sunset provisions, and structural commitments to review and reassessment. Without them, incentives naturally favor continuation regardless of changing circumstances.
Good intentions may justify action. But only sound incentives justify confidence.
In public policy, whether in economics, budgets, or law, outcomes are governed less by what we hope will happen than by what people are rewarded for doing.
Temporary government programs are rarely temporary, not because planners lack care, but because the incentives embedded in institutional life favor endurance over expiration.
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