Is making a profit a goal of any government? Is getting the most bang for the buck a better way of evaluating government spending? Success for government is not a profit margin, an IPO, a market share calculation. So your entire premise comparing one with the other is based upon totally different ideas of what success is. This is what conservatives get wrong.
Tell me again. What is success in Government? How do you measure it? Your simple answer will be that you cannot because they will never succeed at anything. Tell me the intelligent answer though....
Success in government lies in doing the things a government does without violating the rights of the individuals served by that government, and without breaking the laws that limit the government.
The way our government is organized does not lead to fiscal efficiency -- if you work for a government agency and you manage the money in that agency well, and instead of spending every dime you get this year, you return 10 percent of your budget to the general fund, what happens is instead of being rewarded your budget for the next years is cut by 10 percent. As such an annual cut isn't possible for most entities, instead of being efficient in saving money they try to spend every dime allotted to them so as to preserve their budget for future operations. It's an inefficient system, almost by design.