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They all think they haven’t enough. No watchdog has ever suggested that he or she could get by with a little less

They are all legally independent of the general bureaucracy under government direction and have millions of taxpayers’ dollars at their disposal. Whether their funding is proper, too little or too much, is something we might consider. They all think they haven’t enough. No watchdog has ever suggested that he or she could get by with a little less.

Nor has any ever suggested that their purview or powers might be curtailed.

What distinguishes watchdogs from the rest of government officials is their official righteousness. While politicians are just politicians, and we know what they’re like, and bureaucrats are bureaucrats, either doing politicians’ will or empire building for the shear fun of it, watchdogs are a special class whose job is simply to stand up for what’s right, in their respective fields. The whole point of their existence is that they must be righteous.

But you cannot make people righteous by appointment and the attempt to do so, and the assumption that you can, is itself corrupting.

People of the finest character would understand that official righteousness is humanly impossible and decline appointment. But there has been no shortage of previously unheard of people to take up the well-paid and prestigious work of official righteousness.

The parliamentary budget officer, as near the purest watchdog, is a good example.

This sixth wheel, though sadly adopted in other parliamentary democracies, like the United Kingdom, where there is an Office for Budget Responsibility, is modelled on the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in Washington. The United States needs a CBO because there Congress can spend money whether the government wants to or not and somebody has to look at the budgetary consequences. In parliamentary democracies, no money can be spent except on the government’s initiative. And it has to present a budget and Parliament has to approve it.