Wasting the taxpayer's money


If they wouldn't have built it with their own cash, why do you suppose we should fund it?
I usually try not to cite two stories from the same source in the same day. But Stephen Moore has a great one too. Emphasis added.

One hopes Congress has paid close attention to this scandal because there's a policy lesson here related to the current budget debate in Washington: The almost inevitable waste and ineptitude that follows federally earmarked funds--and in the Big Dig, we have the most expensive federal transportation earmark in history. Two of every three dollars spent came from Uncle Sam.

I asked Mr. Romney--a vocal opponent of the earmarking pandemic on Capitol Hill--whether this project would have been built if Massachusetts voters had been required to pay for it themselves. He shakes his head and concedes, "I doubt it." One of the perversities of federal cost sharing is that it rewards localities with greater infusions of cash in proportion to the levels of waste. Every $100,000 wasted was another hard-hat job created in Boston. Meanwhile, contractors were rewarded for delays and overruns with added profits.

In a nutshell, that is why government projects seldom work. There is no accountability, and it is not their money that they are spending.

If the money had come out of their pockets, the project wouldn't have happened.

How much of the Federal budget do you suppose we could cut if we applied that standard?

How much of the State budgets do you suppose we could cut if we applied that standard?

If I never go to Boston, do you suppose I could get a refund?

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - August 3, 2006 at 08:42 AM  Tag


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