Outcomes depend on incentives. In other words, when a person becomes a part of government, he or she somehow becomes no longer self-seeking. But one should note that dressing a pig in a tuxedo does not change the fact that he is a pig. We should be realistic, not naive, about how government spending works. Federal funding inevitably becomes distorted because of special interest pressures.
Every dollar spent by the federal government is received by someone.
Recipients necessarily become special interests with relatively low costs of information about the specific federal program, high benefits from sustaining it and naturally good position and expertise to influence it. The typical citizen remains rationally ignorant about the operation and effects of complicated and expensive programs because the personal costs of such information are high and benefits low. A popular principle of political action is to concentrate benefits on grateful, identifiable beneficiaries who will help a politician advance his or her career, while hiding and spreading the costs thinly over the politically inactive majority of the population. People who make the decisions at the federal level don't bear the costs of their bad decisions or reap the benefits of good ones. Eighty percent of those who testify at legislative hearings are government officials.