Government employees first responsibility is to protect their budget allocation. The second is to increase that allocation.
Not ALL government employees do this--only the higher-level ones and those responsible for budgets in the first place. My husband is a government employee, but has nothing whatsoever to do with budgets, except running into the chronic "that isn't funded." My husband's first and only responsibility is to make sure every employee on the base goes home with the same number of fingers, toes, and other extremities they came to work with--he works in the Occupational Health & Safety office. He gets very frustrated when safety programs, lectures, posters and printed material, and guest speakers have to be canceled at the last minute because all of a sudden someone found a new use for the money and outranks him.
Without people like my husband, we wouldn't have to go to war to have casualties similar to those coming home from Iraq--it would happen right here at work.
Too many people seem to think the "O" in OSHA stands for optional.
Commenting by HaloScan
