Great Moments in Government

In the private sector, there is a bottom-line incentive to obtain the best supplies at the cheapest price. In government bureaucracies, by contrast, there is little incentive to be frugal. Instead, the focus is on mindless paperwork and onerous regulation.

The process for obtaining paper towels on Capitol Hill is a good example. Even the Washington Post is unable to resist a tongue-in-cheek tone in an article about the search:

The office of the Architect of the Capitol, which is responsible for stocking paper towels in bathrooms throughout the Capitol complex, recently released its requirements for paper supplies to potential vendors.

…The specifications, written with the detail only your massive federal bureaucracy could provide, spell out eight requirements for towels fit for the Capitol. Among them: “C-fold paper towels provided shall have a minimum unfolded width of 10.25 inches, with a permissible variance of plus .25 or minus .50 inches, and maximum length of 14 inches. Each towel shall have a minimum area of 130 square inches. The folded width of each towel shall be 3 inches, with a permissible variance of plus .25 or minus .50 inches. The rate of absorption of paper towel material provided shall not be greater than 20 seconds for the absorption of 0.1 milliliter of water on any representative sample of paper towel as submitted. The color of the paper towel shall be white, with a minimum brightness rating of 70 when measured in accordance with the requirements of test method T-452 of the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industries. The minimum thickness of 12 single plies of the paper towel material provided shall be 0.070 inch when measured under an applied pressure of 0.5 psig."

And we won't even get into the "average bursting strength" requirement of the two-ply toilet paper.