Liberia, Nov. 10 -- More for lawmakers' fuel than for the nation's medicines. More for retired politicians than for the poor. Liberia's biggest-ever budget has its priorities upside down.

LIBERIA HAS NEVER had this much money to spend. The draft national budget for 2027 comes to US$1.54 billion, 18 percent more than this year. In September, revenue collection passed US$1 billion in a single year for the first time. The Finance Ministry's slogan for the budget is "A Growing Budget for Bigger Impact."

THE QUESTION IS who gets the impact. Read the budget's 845 pages line by line, as we have, and the answer is uncomfortable. The extra money goes mainly to the people who write the budget, approve it, guard it and lend to it. The Liberians th...