HB25, the 2025 Capital Improvement Appropriations Act, is New Hampshire’s latest example of government abandoning its rightful role to play investor, developer, and dispenser of taxpayer-funded favors. On its face, the bill looks like any other biennial capital budget—allocating $137.6 million from the General Fund to fix buildings, patch roads, and upgrade facilities. But once you read past the standard governmentese, it becomes painfully clear that this is not budgeting for basic public service. This is the Administrative State in full bloom, a bill bloated with soft socialism, top-down economic engineering, and a quiet surrender of state sovereignty to the federal government.
Introduced by the Public Works and Highways Committee—hardly a bastion of constitutionalism, with an average Freedom Index score of just 42%—this bill was carried by Democrats and Republicans alike. Many of these same lawmakers champion a Convention of States and claim to fear Washington’s overreach, all while happily lining their departments with federal cash. Funny how Congress only becomes corrupt when it isn’t handing them money. The bill’s sponsor, David Milz, a so-called Republican, with a scorecard of only 56% is a shimmering example of how party labels mean nothing. He’s Rick Bennett’s ideological twin—the only real difference being which state capital they report to. If Bennett acts as Janet Mills’ lapdog in Maine, then one has to wonder who holds David Milz’s leash in Concord.
Among the most glaring insults to taxpayers is the $27.2 million appropriation for the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway. That’s right—tens of millions for a ski lift. This isn’t critical infrastructure or a public health necessity; it’s luxury tourism wrapped in taxpayer-subsidized ribbon. One might ask: who decided that the government’s job is to entertain tourists or act as a venture capitalist for the ski industry? Article 83 of the New Hampshire Constitution encourages “free government and the blessings of liberty,” not central planning for mountain rides. If the government exists to secure the natural rights of the people—as the Declaration of Independence tells us—then we’ve clearly veered off course. Bastiat wrote that the law exists to defend life, liberty, and property. This tramway fiasco does none of the above.
The deeper issue with HB25 is how it surrenders state autonomy under the illusion of progress. Many of the bill’s projects depend on massive infusions of federal matching funds—$30.4 million for a Medicaid IT system, $65 million for Department of Transportation projects, and full federal funding for military facility construction. While cooperative federalism may be legally permissible, the practical result is that New Hampshire’s agencies become de facto outposts of the Executive Office of the President. Once the feds pay for it, they design it, control it, and regulate it. Federal cybersecurity standards, Davis-Bacon labor rules, cloud software compliance—these are now embedded in state operations, not through a public vote or legislative debate, but through fiscal dependence. It’s a slow-motion administrative coup, and New Hampshire’s government is the willing participant.
To make matters worse, the bill authorizes $171 million in bonded debt—kicking the can down the road and locking future legislatures into fiscal obligations they didn’t approve. Article 6 of the New Hampshire Constitution allows for borrowing, but this level of indebtedness—especially in pursuit of federal matches—smacks more of manipulation than prudence. This is the kind of financial sleight of hand that undermines a republican form of government. When the public can’t follow where the money is going or why, representative government becomes a puppet show. Even worse, HB 25-A allows funds to be shifted between projects by executive discretion and allows state appropriations to be reduced automatically if federal funds fall through. That’s not budgeting—that’s outsourcing fiscal control to federal bureaucrats and agency directors. It contradicts the principle laid out in Article 8: that all power must be accountable to the people. If no one can tell you who sets the rules, who moved the money, or why, then accountability is gone.
Let’s be clear: HB25 is not about infrastructure. It’s about institutionalizing dependence, laundering federal control through grants, and keeping the public distracted with projects like ski lifts and cyber upgrades. It turns the legislature into a grant-writing firm, the departments into federal franchisees, and the taxpayer into a silent investor with no say. The whole scheme would be impressive if it weren’t so dishonest. Madison warned in Federalist 41 that the “general welfare” clause would be abused by those seeking power under the guise of benevolence. He wasn’t wrong. HB 25-A isn’t just a budget—it’s a blueprint for how republics die by degrees. And it’s being passed off as progress.
Frederic Bastiat saw this coming. He warned that the state eventually becomes “the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” When government steps beyond defending natural rights and instead uses law as a tool to redistribute, subsidize, and control, it ceases to be law at all—it becomes legal plunder. HB 25-A is exactly that: a quiet transfer of liberty for comfort, and sovereignty for subsidy. And the most dangerous part? It’s happening in plain sight, disguised as responsible governance.
