Government spending going bad

The below is an excerpt from a weekly article written by Gregg Easterbrook.  Gregg is a terrific writer, and I tend to agree with his thoughts, so I'm sharing them here.

Economic growth has slowed while the national debt has risen: Reckless borrowing has been the rule under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Yet hardly anything new is getting built. Government-funded construction projects continue to take too long and cost too much. Corruption in government contracting appears to be rampant, as does the desire of local politicians to drag their feet in order to keep money flowing. In May, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that cost-effectiveness of subway spending is not as important as "social equity," by which he seemed to mean channeling handouts to party interest groups. If the people in charge of large government spending projects -- whether those people are Republicans or Democrats -- think cost-effective use of taxpayers' money does not matter, that is a formula for reckless borrowing combined with little progress. Exactly what the country's getting.

A year ago your columnist offered numerous big-picture examples on Reuters. Sometimes the little picture is easier to understand, so consider the reflecting pool between the Washington and Lincoln monuments. Recently there was a federally funded project to renovate the reflecting pool. The renovation took two years -- longer than was required to build the pool 90 years ago when machinery was much less efficient -- and cost $34 million. Two years and $34 million to rebuild a pool of water.

The super-slow, super-expensive project -- perhaps overseen by dozens of senior-grade managers with few if any actual duties -- is now finished, and the new pool has immediately filled with algae.

The National Park Service, which supervised the renovation, "said the project was an overall success," The Washington Post reported. Of course the project was a success -- Park Service officials and contractors received millions of dollars for doing very little. That was the whole point all along! At any private business that botched an overpriced project, heads would roll. The Park Service knows that as with all government initiatives, there will never be any accountability. When government botches an overpriced project, everyone gets a raise. Excuse me, a "step increase."

I'm just one man, and I agree with Gregg's opinion.
Thanks for reading
Dustin Dominiak