Wealth & Money Quote by Dave Freudenthal

The line lands like a deadpan confession: if you want to survive in government, don’t govern - just dump the cash in a bag and hope nobody asks what it’s for. Coming from Dave Freudenthal, a politician and former Wyoming governor, it reads less like cynicism for its own sake than a practical satire of how public spending gets weaponized. The “safest course” isn’t the smartest policy; it’s the least litigable, least attackable move in a political culture that treats discretion as corruption and priorities as favoritism.

The sack is doing heavy rhetorical work. It’s deliberately crude, almost cartoonish, and that’s the point: budgeting is supposed to be about tradeoffs, metrics, and long-term planning, but the incentives often reward something closer to a blind payout. By turning fiscal management into a physical gag - money tossed en masse - Freudenthal underlines how accountability can perversely encourage irresponsibility. If every targeted program creates a constituency of losers and a paper trail for opponents, then the safest move is to be indiscriminate.

Subtext: this is what happens when “transparency” becomes performative and politics becomes a permanent prosecutorial theater. Officials stop optimizing for outcomes and start optimizing for survivability. The quote nudges listeners to notice the quiet scandal: not that government wastes money, but that our political ecosystem can make thoughtful spending feel like the riskiest option available.