Black Budget in the Red | Julian Sanchez | Cato Institute: Commentary

Black Budget in the Red | Julian Sanchez | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Nobody doubts that the FBI and the NSA serve vital functions. And if $75 billion per year is the price of detecting and preventing plots to murder Americans by the thousands, it would be hard to call it money wasted.

Yet the most compelling conservative arguments for skepticism about runaway government growth have never depended on the worthiness of the goals at which government aims. Rather, conservatives have drawn on the insights of public-choice economics, which predicts that rational bureaucratic actors — often in collusion with profit-seeking firms — will more reliably act to maximize their own power and budgets than seek the general welfare."