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Originally Posted by ylwjacket
I'm actuall very moderate, usually (my Republican friends call me liberal). I can't stand the fact that our government wastes our money, when they could use it more effectively.
Maybe until they do, I am extremely reluctant to part with more of it for their waste.
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Part of the reason there is so much waste actually happens to do with the involvement of private business in government programs.
One example of this I cited earlier in this thread is the Medicaid bill passed last year. It specifically prohibits the government from bargaining with the drug companies for better "group rate" prices like the private insurance companies do. Instead, the bill says the government must pay full retail for all drugs. Now while you may call this "waste", I call this legalized corruption. Your politicians are clearly passing a bill to help their buddies who own the drug companies. There is no other logical explanation for this. One has to wonder if President Bush and congress would have even decided to tackle the issue of Medicaid if there was not some way in which they could make money for some private corporations. My opinion is that they would not have even bothered.
And unfortunately, that seems to be what is happening to most government programs these days. Everything from the education budget to the military budget is filled with this sort of "waste" (corruption). The waste is not caused by a lack of efficiency. The waste is quite intentional.
The only solution to this problem that I can think of is to stop mixing the public and private sector. For example, if the military is going to be run by the government, then so should all the military contractors. There should be no private industry mixing with government spending. That is what leads to corruption. Politicians should not have the power to help big business make a profit by spending your tax money. While you cannot achieve this 100%, the best effort should be made.