Governments on local, State, and Federal levels utilize taxing, fees, and other charges in order to extract money from the general public and provide necessary infrastructure as well as other benefits to the population. The thing about money is that the way that you typically treat your own cash is not the same way that you treat it when you are the steward of it, even when you believe your intentions are admirable. For instance, when the money is yours, you are going to be more cognizant of how and why you spend your funds, as well as at least attempting to prioritize and to budget your monies. On the other hand, those that work in government agencies, or in fiduciary duties, may indeed want to make prudent and sound decisions, but simply aren't going to put forth the same diligence and devotion to the usage of such money as if it was their own, because it isn't, and that mindset makes a material difference.
This would imply strongly that the more that governmental stewards are removed from the money that they have to spend being directly extracted from themselves or even from people that they have a direct relationship with, the less concerned that they are with it, or about the result or impact of that money. After all, if you really don't know where the money came from, it is far less likely that you will treat it with the same meaningful concern. So too, the usage of other people's money, especially when you're doing all of the taking and all of the talking, makes it rather easy to request more, or to spend more, and to expend a lot more than what you really need to do, because you do not personally feel your wallet becoming lighter.
This is why stewards of money, no matter how governance is setup, no matter how convoluted and confusing the structure is, must be much more transparent about how they treat and expend monies provided or allocated to them, for if you do hold your governmental and other fiduciary figures feet to the fire, they will have a strong tendency to be less than responsible in doing the right thing for those that they are serving.
There is risk, and there is risk with other people's money, and they are not the same thing. For instance, those risking their own money make it a practice to be involved and cognizant of it, whereas those, playing with other people's money, care more for not being embarrassed about their use or misuse of funds, rather than being overly concerned about the performance or utilization of it.
The bottom line is that efficiency drops substantially the more removed the money is from where it actually originated from. This signifies that the best politics and best spending, are done on a local and not on a national effort, for those on a local level, will best understand the things that they really need to get done, whereas those on a federal or far-removed level, are perhaps more concerned with spending as much as possible, wherever that they can, because throwing lots of money around, looks like you're doing something, which you are, but not very efficiently and not with all due respect and consideration of the people that you ostensibly serve.