GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE ARTICLE CRITIQUE 2

Government Expenditure Article Critique

The article by Tarlock and Chizewer titled, ‘Living with water in a climate-changed
world: will federal flood policy sink or swim’ examines the measures that federal and local
governments have taken to prepare the country for adverse events induced by climate change
such as very heavy rains and floods along America’s coastal and inland water areas. The authors
argue that failure of Congress to enact comprehensive flood control legislation has significantly
weakened America’s ability to effectively manage both inland and coastal flooding that has
become a major problem due to climate change (Tarlock & Chizewer, 2016). According to the
authors, the Obama Administration’s initiatives that seek to increase the preparedness of
communities living along America’s coasts and inland waterways prone to floods to better
respond to flood risks are an inadequate replacement of comprehensive legislation from
Congress. In the absence of strong federal government leadership and adequate funding, local
governments have been forced to come up with their own flood control policies. Some have been
effective while others have been total failures (Tarlock & Chizewer, 2016). According to the
authors, the most effective way of preparing and mitigating floods both inland and at the coast
and ensuring that the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans who live in these areas are
not destroyed by floods is to have the federal government enact a comprehensive flood
prevention and mitigation policy and have local governments align their own similar policies to
those of the federal government.
In my opinion, the article does a good job at highlighting the problems inherent in
government budget-making. The decision on where to allocate resources is not a one-
man/woman show. There are many people involved in making such decisions. At the federal
government, the government cannot use any money without authorization from Congress.

GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE ARTICLE CRITIQUE 3
Congress itself is made of elected representatives from different states and constituencies who
have varying interests and goals. With so many people involved in making resource allocation
decisions, final policies and monies allocated to various programs are a result of compromises.
At worst, when no compromise is achieved, important problems that need to be solved are left
unattended to. At best, a compromise is achieved but the proposed policies and resources
allocated to solve the problem are often inadequate. In the case of flood prevention and
mitigation and resource allocation to achieve these two objectives, conflicting interests of
Congress members has prevented them from preparing a comprehensive policy with adequate
resources to fund it. The result has been a series of ineffective intervention measures by the
president.
The article clearly captures my personal experience in the public sector. Oftentimes, we
fail to adequately fund a program to solve a given problem because of conflicting interests of the
persons involved in budget-making. Rarely do the requested funds provided in the amounts
requested. As a result, many important programs end up being underfunded and, therefore,
ineffective in solving the problem the funds are supposed to help solve.
The authors’ points and arguments are, therefore, very applicable in public sector. While
the laws cannot be changed to take budget-making powers away from elected officials, the
process can be made more responsive to the needs of the public. The authors argue that
comprehensive policies that fully address large scale problems are more effective than piecemeal
policies and resource allocations such as the ones pursued by the Obama Administration. The
lesson can be used in all public sector organizations so that decision makers learn the value of
providing comprehensive solutions to problems.

GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE ARTICLE CRITIQUE 4
In providing such solutions, governments and other public sector institutions can learn to
use externalities to improve the efficiency of allocated resources. Externalities are costs and
benefits to third parties stemming from actions of the government. A careful analysis of
externalities helps to significantly improve the efficiency of its resource allocation. This
efficiency can be achieved by subsidizing public goods and services that have positive
externalities and taxing more those public goods and services that have negative externalities.

GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE ARTICLE CRITIQUE 5

References

Tarlock, A. D., & Chizewer, D. M. (2016). Living with water in a climate-changed world: will
federal flood policy sink or swim. Environmental Law., 46, 491.