I think it goes without saying that the federal government is currently far overgrown. Nearly everyone in the U.S. agrees with this, but no one really seems to know how to solve the problem. This is a form of tragedy of the commons, as I have pointed out previously. Interestingly, recent polls indicate record low approvals of Congress (currently slightly lower than Bush’s approval rating); the interesting part is that people approve of their own representatives. Why the disparity? The situation is that everyone wants Congress to spend less money, but as long as Congress as a whole is spending a lot of money, people want their own representatives to make sure some of that money gets to them. No one district is willing to stand up and be the first to say: “Don’t spend any money on us.” It’s a perfect deadlock.