Because I find myself referring to it often, here's a short post about Washington Monument Syndrome.
Symptoms of WMS are generally manifested by legislators who feel under political pressure to cut taxes, cut spending, and stop wasting public money (WMS can also be displayed when legislators want to raise taxes). Regardless of what bloated programs and superfluous bureaucracy is available to be slashed, politicians will pretend there's no fat to cut and insist to the public that if one single penny is taken away from the government budget they'll have no choice but to shut down the Washington Monument.
Such pleas and threats can take many forms. Some of the most popular services that greedy politicians like to line up first for the chopping block are police, firefighters, and education. These services are important to the average voter, and politicians hope that when the public is faced with the false choice of either losing police officers and teachers or raising taxes, people will meekly hand over their paychecks.
The best treatment for WMS is to simply ignore the politicians' apocalyptic warnings. The threats are empty, and there are always lots of expenses that can be cut before the Washington Monument will have to be closed.
It's more of a defense than a syndrome, Michael. And it works wonderfully well. Consider how the threat of withholding school buses and after-school sports affects parents after they've declined to ratify a school budget.
The only cure is...not suitable for a family-friendly blog.
One possible cure would be forcing each government agency to publish a line by line income and expense statement complete with either a lawmakers name or a previous bill number referenced to every amount so tax payers can see who exactly is wasting money on pork and special deals. Obviously, there would an exception for the CIA/NSA and Military whose line items would be reviewed privately by Senators and the SecDef, who must then sign their names to the total amount which would be published. This would be available online and at any public library. It would also help if there were several private non-profit orgs dedicated to finding and exposing pork deals and under the table bribes. Just making individual government critters accountable should improve things.
Tim
That's exactly what has just failed two years in a row here in Oregon. It was very predictable, with figures dutifully printed and quoted by the local media that listed EXACTLY how many crime lab officials, teachers and police officers would be let go immediately. They even listed specific police patrol routes that would be cut.
Of course, now that the voters have rejected that line of reasoning (by wide margins) in special elections twice, the local officials have found ways to "re-work" the budget and avoid any immediate lay-offs.
Go figure.
The problem isn't in giving out the information. The problem is that the people don't have a feedback loop. If you had some sort of public budgeting groupware, alternative plans could be presented and politicians would have to deal with a plethora of alternative cuts that preserve the Washington Monument and close the budget gaps. It would destroy the entire viability of the defense (agreed, it's not a syndrome) because the defense depends on the false assumption that there are no alternatives.
But I suggest one thing further. If the people have to substitute their direct brainpower for the legislature, that is a useless legislature that needs heavy turnover in personnel.
I suppose WMD makes a better (and more timely) acronym :)
If I ever get elected to a legislative body, I'll promise to cast every vote according to an online poll on my website.