The Sorensen Monologues

Archive for August 24th, 2011

This Week’s Cartoon: “Big-Spending Bureaucrats”

There’s this persistent idea that government spending is akin to decadent and frivolous consumer spending. People speak of “greedy government bureaucrats” lusting after tax dollars as though they were hedonists seeking their next shopper’s high. As though the mundane work of keeping the streetlights on or preventing sewage treatment tanks from overflowing was like buying a Roomba.

I’m not saying there’s no government waste. The fact that Medicare can’t negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over the price of drugs is a big stupid waste of taxpayer money. So is outsourcing the work of the U.S. military to highly-paid mercenaries. And yet we don’t hear the self-proclaimed deficit hawks screeching about these hardworking-taxpayer-dollar-suckers. Somebody’s buying expensive toys, all right.


Jen Sorensen is a cartoonist seen on Daily Kos, The Nib, and in magazines and
newspapers throughout the US. She is a 2017 Pulitzer finalist and recipient of the 2014 Herblock Prize and a 2013 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

 

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