Proposed Bill Would Use Tax Dollars to Help ‘Lonely’ People Make Friends

WASHINGTON, DC – An unusual bill aimed at tackling loneliness has made its way into the U.S. Senate earlier in July, courtesy of Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy who is aiming to use taxpayer money to essentially help American citizens make friends.

On July 18th, Sen. Murphy followed up on some remarks about the impacts of loneliness he made in June on the Senate floor, bringing forth new legislation to be considered that he dubbed “The National Strategy for Social Connection Act.”

Per the current iteration of Sen. Murphy’s bill, the legislation would prompt the federal government to find ways for lonely people to conjure up some new pals, in a sense. This particularly odd effort proposed to the federal government as outlined in Sen. Murphy’s bill of course comes with a cost, which is already projected in the millions.

This is true.

And I get it – it feels a little weird to have government care about your social life. But I think we can't ignore the growing loneliness crisis in this country. It has policy impacts, and we should deal with them.https://t.co/1efVZyG7m7.

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) July 19, 2023

According to The National Strategy for Social Connection Act [NSSCA], an office would be established within the White House in order to directly advise the president on how matters like loneliness adversely impacts the country via the economy, national security, public health, and even the environment.

As outlined in the bill regarding the hierarchy of this office within White House, one office Director will be netting level IV of the Executive Schedule annually (+180K) and four Associate Directors will net level V of the Executive Schedule annually (+170K). Overall, that’s over $860K a year for the *five* employees stationed at the White House telling the president that people need more friends.

On top of the aforementioned, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be gifted $5 million every year through 2029 to fund studies on loneliness and social infrastructures/connections.

That nearly $6 million annually for this loneliness office and related research also doesn’t even address the other costs that’ll mount for the intended forming of an advisory council, an ambiguous “government-wide strategy” to address loneliness, and an intended “public education campaign” to ostensibly help people make friends.

Obviously, Sen. Murphy didn’t wake up one day and thought that the government needs to help folks make friends, this legislation appears to be heavily inspired by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

This past May, Murthy produced a report titled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” which asserted that being lonely renders a “mortality impact” that is commensurate to “smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day,” and is potentially worse than “obesity.”

Amid this report from Murthy, he suggested the creation of a “National Strategy to Advance Social Connection,” which bears a near synonymous outline to Sen. Murphy’s proposed legislation.

Prior to being appointed to Surgeon General in March of 2021 under President Biden, Murthy had served as Surgeon General under former President Obama. When Murthy was removed from office in April of 2017 under the Trump administration, he penned a piece in the Harvard Business Review a mere five months later which seemingly launched his kick into wanting the government to address the “growing health epidemic” of “loneliness.”

In January of 2018, Michael Tanner of the National Review wrote an article criticizing the idea of government trying to solve societal dilemmas like loneliness, calling the task “a recipe for disaster.”

Tanner also expressed concerns about how such lofty ideals are generally appealing across political lines, writing, “There is now a general belief, one increasingly shared by politicians and voters of both parties, that every problem, large or small, can only be solved by the government.”

With this particular bill being brought forth by Sen. Murphy, it would put Congressmembers in a position where they’d face a sort of false dichotomy of their perceived character: voting yes on the bill would mean they want to help lonely people, voting no would mean they want people to not have friends.

While the above hypothetical may seem ridiculous, this sort of playbook is par for the course in setting members of Congress up for the old fashioned Washington smear – thus, likely rendering an outcome where everyone on all political sides will hop on the bus to avoid getting run over.

Thereby, Big Government gets to frivolously burn away more taxpayer dollars under the guise that they’ll help you make more friends.