Government Officials Spend Money Like It's Your Money, Not Theirs
You could say people in business do that, too. However, it's been my experience working at big and small companies and being government adjacent as a volunteer mediator at City Hall (as well as reading about government) that there are vastly more checks on unmitigated spending at non-government entities.

Brad Polumbo writes at FEE about the latest in a string of big bucks scams to score COVID relief funds:

A group of scammers in New York City allegedly ripped off millions from the state's super-charged pandemic welfare system. They were busted after (rather foolishly) posting pictures of themselves with massive money stacks on social media and now face prosecution.

"A group of young men is accused of ripping off $2 million in COVID-19 relief funds by stealing personal information from people in the assistance program, funneling their money to personal bank accounts, and withdrawing the cash at banks in Brooklyn and Queens," Fox Business reports. "The scams began last June and continued through April."

The scammers' target was the state's unemployment benefits system. During the pandemic, the government greatly increased benefit payouts and hastily expanded eligibility to new categories of workers. In its rush to get taxpayer money out the door, the government created a target-rich system flush with cash and light on verification.

These scammers in New York only got caught because they were particularly, erm, flagrant in their criminal activity. They made multiple unusually large withdrawals at ATMs, triggering monitors, and openly posted the huge influx of cash on social media.

I wish I could tell you that this story was just a one-off. But countless similar examples of rampant fraud have emerged during the government's massive "emergency" spending spree. The expansion of unemployment benefits alone has lost a truly astounding amount of money to fraud.

A report shows that the federal government has potentially lost up to $200 billion in taxpayer money to scammers ripping off the system. For context, that's equivalent to $1,400 lost per federal taxpayer. (There goes your "stimmy" check!).

And the total money lost to fraud is more than 5 times as much as the feds spent on vaccine development. According to the American Enterprise Institute, "unemployment fraud" now ranks as the 4th biggest federal COVID expenditure out of more than 17 different categories.

Of course, it benefits government officials to be quick to hand out cash and slow (if at all) to put any checks on those handouts. (Lobbyists, wheeling and dealing, and dim voters reward them for being lax on both ends.)

Living in California, I've started to see it as a mark of not being brain dead that, for the most part, no one I ever vote for is elected. (Schwarzenegger -- who wasn't able to get much done -- was an exception.)

P.S. Rand Paul is an exception to the "Whoopee! Spending binge!" government crowd.