What did they expect?

This morning on MSNBC on Morning Joe, a group of pundits were going on and on about how terrible it was that the health care bill turned out to be one big payoff to the health insurance industry and big pharma.

But what did they expect? There is a direct correlation between size of government and corruption. As the government gets bigger and more intrusive, it becomes a much better investment for companies and industry to spend money lobbying and bribing politicians than it does to invest in other productive activities, like developing new and better products or providing better value to customers.

One of the pundits was Carl Bernstein, and he was arguing that the only solution was public financing of political campaigns. But who would then decide who gets that public financing, and how exactly will that process not get corrupted?

The best, and perhaps only way to reduce corruption and the influence of money in politics is to shrink the size of government.