Its first act is to designate, to define the objects of its largess. That simple act, before all else, designates the selected individuals as inadequate, deficient, incapable of self-improvement. What the review didn't state is that the program itself is motivated to foster and maintain victims that need, even require, its singular and persistent aid and devotion. It is in the nature of bureaucratic survival to fail, to perpetuate as long as possible the problem, the motive for a continuation of the program's existence. Success, in this context, is death.
Failure is survival.
Perhaps you wonder why this lesson hasn't been learned in Congress, or why every politician west of the Bering Straits totally ignored the earthquake admissions of failure. Yes, the report was issued a day before the State of the Union Address and in the middle of an impeachment trial. Yes, it was just a follow-up to conclusions suggested two years ago in an earlier review. But that's not the reason why it was ignored. In the kindest possible terms, failure is irrelevant to politics.