Every year there seem to be new emergencies. So it seems fair to say that curating emergencies and applying expensive political band-aids is a higher policy priority than long-term projects that might actually improve the standard of living.
There are plenty of government policies (I count agriculture, defense, and healthcare) that seem designed to funnel taxpayer money to crony corporations. But engineering the collapse of AIG, GM, and the investment banks simply to nationalize them seems outside the competence of the federal government.