Appendix F. 
229 
may be mere rationeilizations for the failure to win the policy battle, it 
is worth examining their flaws fully. 
m. Morals, Federal Funding, and Legislation 
A. Federal Funding 
In the first place, federal funding is about resource distribution- 
who and what will get how much of the nation’s scarce taxpayer 
dollars. It is usually not about restricting basic rights. For example, 
there is no constitutional right to the funding of biomedical research. 
But often the question of whether government will or "will not fund 
an activity is about more than mere distribution. It is about 
government shaping choices among various and competing goods or 
undertakings. It is a statement of approval and encouragement by 
government, a declaration by the nation that an activity or 
undertaking is meritorious and has priority. Or, in the decision to 
withhold funds, government policy can be a statement of disapproval 
and discouragement, a declaration by the nation that a permitted 
activity or undertaking lacks merit or has low priority. 
Policy decisions about funding resemble policy decisions about 
taxing. Both sorts of decisions create incentives and disincentives by 
making activities more or less costly. The child tax credit, for 
example, reduces the financial cost of child rearing. In so doing, it 
strengthens families in two ways: it enables families to save money, 
and it conveys an important message about the political importance 
of the well-being of the family. Similarly, government funding of 
research into disease and its prevention and treatment increases the 
supply of these goods, and reflects our nation's considered judgment 
that the rehef of physical suffering is a high national priority. 
While all law either requires, forbids, or permits, the provision or 
withholding of funding and the use of tax incentives and 
disincentives allows government to express a range of attitudes 
toward that which it permits. In the United States, through such 
decisions government strongly endorses charity and higher 
education. It looks favorably on national service and the arts. It 
shows a preference for marriage to cohabitation. It frowns upon 
smoking. It is the distinction between permitting or tolerating an 
activity (which is the case with embryo research and destruction) 
and actively promoting it through governmental funding (which the 
president’s policy on stem cells prohibits), that is crucial to 
understanding the president’s stem cell research policy, but not only 
to the stem cell controversy. 
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