moneyball1

It doesn’t appear to be posted yet online, but the opening paragraph of a new Atlantic feature from Peter Orszag and John Bridgeland is worth quoting, even out of context.

Based on our rough calculations, less than $1 out of every $100 of government spending is backed by even the most basic evidence that the money is being spent wisely. As former officials in the administrations of Barack Obama (Peter Orszag) and George W. Bush (John Bridgeland), we were flabbergasted by how blindly the federal government spends. In other types of American enterprise, spending decisions are usually quite sophisticated, and are rapidly becoming more so: baseball’s transformation into “moneyball” is one example. But the federal government — where spending decisions are largely based on good intentions, inertia, hunches, partisan politics, and personal relationships — has missed this wave.

Later in the piece, Bridgeland documents the impact of the Program Assessment Rating Tool, a 2002 innovation designed to root out ineffective government programs.

moneyball2By the end of Bush’s second term, PART had assessed about 1,000 programs. Of them, 19 percent were rated “effective,” 32 percent “moderately effective,” 29 “adequate,” 3 percent “ineffective,” and 17 percent “results not demonstrated” (meaning that the programs couldn’t be assessed, because of insufficient data). This information was used to develop the president’s budget proposals to Congress, but PART was not developed in cooperation with Congress, and Congress gave its assessment little heed.

Still think government spending is no big problem? Check out another highlighted quotation from Orszag and Bridgeland’s article at the right.