GOVERNMENT AND SPENDING

"In Washington, one person's waste is another person's pork. Every dime spent by the federal government has well-connected advocates who swear the money is vital to the national interest. ... It's not that people in government aren't as good or competent as those in the private sector (though that may be true). The difference lies in the incentives and feedback they face. Bureaucracies have little check on what they do, no bottom line, no market prices for their 'output.' What they do have is an incentive to spend all the money budgeted or risk getting less next year. As Milton Friedman used to say, no one spends other people's money as carefully as he spends his own. It is absurd to think the humongous constellation of federal bureaucracies is going to identify and root out 'waste' in any significant way. It's just not in the nature of the beast."

-- John Stossel