Lots of people say that government should be run more like a business—that it should spend money efficiently, the way private citizens and private businesses spend money. But the truth is that government can’t run like a business. It’s impossible. Private citizens and businesses always spend their own money. Governments always spend yours.

Taxpayers have been treated to a throng of news stories this past couple of weeks about a highly-paid bureaucrat named Merali who racked up $350,000 in expense claims. It seems that you and I shelled out $1,750 to fix his Mercedes, $2,000 to buy and install his car phone, and $30 an hour for a couple of butlers he hired.

Some media outlets have had a feeding frenzy over the story, which is to be expected. Wily bureaucrats who waste big money make for snappy headlines. Yet, with rare exception, the media missed the true story, or as Paul Harvey called it, “the rest of the story.”

The rest of the story is that Merali is nothing more than a poster-child for government largesse. Ottawa and Edmonton are brimming with politicians and bureaucrats who could start a fraternity with the guy, because in varying degrees, they do what he did. The only difference is that someone put in the time and effort to submit umpteen Freedom of Information requests about Merali, and therefore, the guy was found out.

Merali’s ex-boss, a bureaucrat named Weatheril, claims the government healthcare agency Merali fleeced, “had appropriate expenditure policies that were consistent with other public sector organizations.”

It’s the “consistent with other public sector organizations” that should scare the dickens out of Alberta taxpayers. Weatheril’s assertion indicates that the real problem is not Merali, but that government, by its very nature, is drawn to waste taxpayer money as surely as magnetic north draws a compass needle.

Private individuals face personal and immediate consequences when spending their own money. Efficiency matters. But politicians and bureaucrats never spend their own money.

That’s why Canada’s “conservative” MPs do to taxpayers exactly what Merali did to taxpayers. Bev Oda, who resigned as an MP largely over a $16 glass of taxpayer-funded orange juice, paid slightly more than $100,000 into an MP pension plan, from which she will draw back about $700,000. Since they have never changed it, the plan is obviously approved of by MPs like Leon Benoit, Jason Kenney, Stephen Harper, and Rona Ambrose.

So when it comes to flushing taxpayer dough down the toilet, who’s the real Merali? Does anyone really believe the only $16 glass of juice ever paid for by taxpayers was the one Oda consumed? (Keeping in mind that $16 orange juice might be a $100 bottle of wine, a personal trip on a jet, a padded pension or exaggerated mileage claim.)

The real story behind Merali’s trips, butlers, and fine dining is that people in government are always spending someone else’s money. $16 orange juice, in whatever form it might be, is inevitable. It explains why the best government is the government that does the least, and why the best politicians are those who work not to make government more efficient, but smaller.

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