"We need to spend the remaining 20% of our budget on something. No, I don't care what it is. Justify it and figure it out, otherwise our budget will be reduced and we'll be fucked when something big comes up next year."
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I remember being perplexed by this govt thought process when I first learned about it .... 25 years ago. And I'm still perplexed by it. I don't know how we work our way out of this mentality, but it rewards the very definition of "waste, fraud and abuse". You'd think something more sane like "departments that were under budget this year get first priority in next year's budget" would be a no-brainer policy to adopt, but it's exactly the opposite. Reward thrift, not waste.
I remember being perplexed by this govt thought process when I first learned about it .... 25 years ago. And I'm still perplexed by it. I don't know how we work our way out of this mentality, but it rewards the very definition of "waste, fraud and abuse". You'd think something more sane like "departments that were under budget this year get first priority in next year's budget" would be a no-brainer policy to adopt, but it's exactly the opposite. Reward thrift, not waste.