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Townhall Finance
Bureaucracy,
Boondoggles, and Bad Behavior
Chris Edwards
Mar 30, 2014
In catching up on news about the federal government today, I noticed
that articles fit into three categories: bureaucracy, boondoggles, and
bad behavior. On any given day, it seems, the Washington Post and other
outlets have new tales of BB&BB to report. No wonder most Americans
want to cut federal spending.
Let’s look at the latest on BB&BB:
Regarding bureaucracy, you can’t find a better illustration that David
Fahrenthold’s article in the Washington Post last Sunday. He describes
an underground cavern in Pennsylvania where 600 government workers
process federal pension paperwork with the use of 28,000 old-fashioned
file cabinets. The paper-based process works the same way that it did
four decades ago, and it takes just as long. Efforts to computerize it
have failed over and over.
Regarding boondoggles, the cost of a new D.C. building for the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau has tripled to $145 million, reports the
Washington Examiner. Meanwhile, a huge new D.C. headquarters for the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is overbudget by $1 billion. When
President George W. Bush created DHS in 2002, he promised that it would
“improve efficiency without growing government” while cutting out
“duplicative and redundant activities that drain critical homeland
security resources.”
Also this week, a House committee learned that numerous Veterans
Affairs’ building projects across the country are overbudget by
hundreds of millions of dollars. It appears that Edwards’ Law of
Government Cost Overruns is as immutable as Murphy’s Law.
Read the rest of this article with links at Townhall Finance
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