Government Like A Business

Americans for Limited Government...

[Bob Casey] wants government to be run more like a business. Now, this is a common notion, and insofar as it's a call for budget-cutting and the like, okay. But government agencies are not run on a profit-and-loss basis. They are much less flexible than businesses. And if they squander taxpayer money, what happens is that they just get more taxpayer money thrown at them.

I was willing to let the statement pass; really I was. But then the next line of the story says Casey thinks "tax cuts for multimillionaires and tax breaks to corporations that send jobs overseas don't make sense."

So, let's see, keeping "too much" of your profit is senseless if you make business decisions that actually help you earn a profit. The debate about outsourcing is for another day. My point today is that even as Mr. Casey wants government to be run more like business, he wants business to be run less like business. And sure, if you tax and regulate a business so much that it can no longer operate like a profit-seeking entity, but only like a regulation-obeying one, it will indeed become less like a business, more like government bureaucracy.