The fact that in government work spending money wisely is not critical the way it is in private sector is a component of the problem. But I think the more fund

The fact that in government work spending money wisely is not critical the way it is in private sector is a component of the problem. But I think the more fundamental problem it points to is a lack of consequences for poor performance. An agency can waste a lot money but rarely does any experience consequences for it. A department can fail miserably on big initiatives, small initiatives and everything in between but again, rarely does anyone get fired or even disciplined for that. Even in the most high profile government IT failure in US history, no one was asked to resign. Start creating real accountability for government organizations and the right people can actually rise to the top and the wrong people can get weeded out (rather than waiting until the bad apples retire). People will start paying a lot more attention to their budgets when they're actually held responsible for using them wisely. > Instead of cutting budgets where people can save money, they should be increasing budgets of those people that can save money or spend it wisely. While that sounds like a simple solution, it would incentivize people to make ill-advised cuts one year so the budget could be increased next year. Really all that needs to be done to end the end of fiscal year spending spree is to not reduce budgets when an organization doesn't spend all of it in a given year