A big difference between govt and the private sector
Both the private sector and government sometimes have bad ideas. In the private sector a bad idea or product has the potential to drag the whole company down, so executives know that you have to pull the plug on bad ones as fast as possible.
Executives who cling to a bad idea or product and blindly defend it even when it's clear it's a disaster often get fired--and reasonably so.
The contrast with politicians couldn't be more stark: If a government program is clearly a stinker--a cesspool of waste and corruption, benefiting only a few favored pigs--it's almost impossible to kill it. The reason's pretty simple: Senator X either had the original idea and loves it, or is getting a whopping campaign contribution from the folks it funnels taxpayer bucks to. Either way, he or she wants to keep it alive as long as possible, and is willing to trade his/her vote on other programs to accomplish that.
Other senators may realize that the senator's pet program sucks, but they know if they vote to kill it, Senator X won't support *their* bill--whether it's the greatest idea ever or nothing but corrupt theft.
In the past, of course, what kept this from happening was that the Constitution limited the federal government to doing only a relatively few things. These were the carefully-specified "enumerated powers" of the Constitution: Defense, post office, patent office, that sort of thing.
For decades, both the president and congress honored these limits, which made it harder to steal money from the treasury. Unfortunately the Constitution was trashed as the supreme law of the land some decades ago--which is why the federal government has so many thousands of officials and bureaus of such questionable usefulness.
Other than killing all the bureaus that aren't specified as enumerated powers under the Constitution, I don't see any way to rectify that.
It's a poser.
Executives who cling to a bad idea or product and blindly defend it even when it's clear it's a disaster often get fired--and reasonably so.
The contrast with politicians couldn't be more stark: If a government program is clearly a stinker--a cesspool of waste and corruption, benefiting only a few favored pigs--it's almost impossible to kill it. The reason's pretty simple: Senator X either had the original idea and loves it, or is getting a whopping campaign contribution from the folks it funnels taxpayer bucks to. Either way, he or she wants to keep it alive as long as possible, and is willing to trade his/her vote on other programs to accomplish that.
Other senators may realize that the senator's pet program sucks, but they know if they vote to kill it, Senator X won't support *their* bill--whether it's the greatest idea ever or nothing but corrupt theft.
In the past, of course, what kept this from happening was that the Constitution limited the federal government to doing only a relatively few things. These were the carefully-specified "enumerated powers" of the Constitution: Defense, post office, patent office, that sort of thing.
For decades, both the president and congress honored these limits, which made it harder to steal money from the treasury. Unfortunately the Constitution was trashed as the supreme law of the land some decades ago--which is why the federal government has so many thousands of officials and bureaus of such questionable usefulness.
Other than killing all the bureaus that aren't specified as enumerated powers under the Constitution, I don't see any way to rectify that.
It's a poser.
posted by SF at
9:33 PM
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