Back in my teaching days, many years ago, one of the things I liked to
ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with
only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2)
providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency's budget
were cut, what would it do?
The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications
for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get
the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of
Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of
Benedict Arnold in the first place.

The example was deliberately extreme as an illustration. But, in the
real world, the same general pattern can be seen in local, state and
national government responses to budget cuts.

The above is from a recent column by Thomas Sowell.