The government has grown so large that nobody really knows where its $3.8 trillion in annual spending goes. Each year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) tries - and fails - to make sense of federal-agency ledgers. On Thursday, GAO refused once again to certify the official balance sheets because they are so shoddily kept.

The green eyeshades complained that Defense Department books are so bad they can’t be audited. Throughout the rest of the government, there are “hundreds of billions” in unreconciled funds. These are the same conclusions the GAO has come to year-after-year for the past 15 years, and yet Uncle Sam still refuses to get his act together.

Private companies would never be allowed to get away with maintaining ledgers this sloppy, but Washington gives itself a pass. The numbers don’t add up for a simple reason: The bureaucracy doesn’t care about spending your money wisely. Bureaucrats don’t even care enough to keep track of it.

Instead of replacing... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/2/big-government-expectatio...