by Foundation for Economic Education
“The findings from the budget office warned that the deal may never come close to delivering on its promises. The analysts found that $13 billion to $18 billion of the cuts involve money that existed only on paper and was unlikely to be tapped in the next decade.” (Washington Post [1])
Fishy budget numbers from Congress? What’s next, the sun setting in the west?
FEE Timely Classic
“Political Accounting [2]” by James Bovard
James Bovard is the author of Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin’s Press, 1999).
Why does the federal government, according to its own auditors, squander tens of billions of tax dollars year after year? Attempts to understand the actions of politicians and bureaucrats on the basis of private-sector decision-making are doomed to failure. Efforts to “fix” government by ending specific boondoggles are quixotic crusades. Government will continue to be profoundly wasteful because that is how politicians maximize their power—a subject that interests politicians far more than do General Accounting Office reports.
“Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” observed George Orwell.[1] Ruth Grant wrote that “hypocrisy and politics are inextricably connected on account of the peculiar character of political relationships.”[2]
Since government is coercion, politics is largely the exercise of deception regarding the intended use of coercion.
The benevolence of government rarely transcends the venality of politics. Paternalism seeks to generate mass happiness by forcibly sacrificing as many people and groups as necessary to the Greater Good. And who defines the Greater Good? The same people who benefit from maximizing the sacrifices.
The amount of power a politician can seize over other people is inversely related to the politician’s honesty. If the politician openly tells people how much more coercive power he seeks and how he intends to use it, there will likely be strong opposition to the expansion of government. Politicians rarely wish to admit that they are pursuing a larger “market share” in the life of the average citizen. Because politicians and government officials often seek more power than they publicly admit, many, if not most, of their analyses of government policies are skewed.
read the rest- Political Accounting: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/political-accounting/
Article printed from The Freeman Online: http://www.thefreemanonline.org
URL to article: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/in-brief/budget-deal-cbo-analysis-shows-initial-spending-cuts-less-than-expected/
URLs in this post:
[1] Washington Post: http://tinyurl.com/4y9jxmr
[2] Political Accounting: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/political-accounting/
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