Why is there so much government waste?

I came across an article titled "Why is there so much government waste?". Here are a few excerpts:

The one thing that these ridiculous expenditures all have in common is that they are a direct result of people being able to spend other people’s money. In Congress’s case, we have 535 people with trillions of other people’s dollars to spend. That they’re content to fritter billions away on toys for special interests shouldn’t be shocking.

Countless Americans will express their indignation after learning of some of the details in the Coburn report. But after a couple of minutes the anger will subside and most folks will go about their business. There’s a good chance that come November they’ll pull the voting lever for a candidate who had a hand in the waste. There’s also a good chance that while they’re upset with a particular expenditure, they’re okay with the general mission of the program responsible for the waste.

Take the numerous examples in the Coburn report of federal money being wasted on subsidies to state and local government. Every year the Department of Transportation gives Oklahoma $150,000 for an airport that receives one flight a month. Beverly Hills, California received $180,000 from a HUD program that’s supposed to help spur economic development in lower-income locales. The Department of Commerce and the USDA teamed up to provide over $1 million to help a county in New York build a new yogurt factory for PepsiCo, Inc.

There are two problems with this mindset. First, so long as the federal government can spend money on anything it wants, politicians are going to spend money on anything they want. Second, contrary to what we’re taught in school, policymakers generally allocate money on the basis of political and parochial concerns — not on the basis of sound economics or even the so-called “public interest.”

So long as the federal government can give handouts to state and local politicians to spend on economic development, there is going to be waste. And as we have documented at Cato’s website, www.DownsizingGovernment.org, even when there isn’t de facto waste, federal programs are fraught with countless other shortcomings.