Originally Posted by kane

One of the problems is that it seems like once the government budgets money for something they refuse to spend it on anything else. For example my buddy works for a small city and right now they, like many cities around the nation are having money problems. They had money budgeted for some road work and some other stuff. When the time came around the roads they were going to fix were fine and could have gone for a few more years before getting fixed. Meanwhile they had a budget shortage for the fire department and other areas and they considered laying off a few people including a couple of fireman. In the end they wasted the money on the road and laid people off (including cutting the department that does building inspections and gives permits down to three day work weeks as well as laying off a fireman) when they could have put the road work off and spent that money on other areas.