Senate privatizes its restaurants

This one is mainly kinda fun, but I think has more significance than is often realized. The U.S. Senate, in a quiet voice vote late at night last week, decided to privatize its restaurant. Here's the Register editorial on the event. Seems the hallowed Senate restaurants had lost money 37 of the last 41 years and was set to lose $2 million this year. Meantime the House restaurant, privatized in the 1980s (also by a Democratic Congress) was not only turning a profit and paying the House a hefty share, its food waa so much better that Senate employees routinely took the tunnel to patronize it. So the private sector -- even when working on a government contract, which is not a pure free-market situation, delivers better than the public sector. The Senate knows that from sad experience, but plans to increase the public-sector involvement in health care. Makes a lot of sense.