It’s been said that doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results, is a sign of insanity.

Congress does that all the time but nobody seems to think lawmakers are uniformly insane — well, except for the cranky, paranoid, political fringe nut-cases, of course.

The issue of federal procurement is a good example.

Policy makers seem to realize that the one direct action they can take that would be of real and practical use to the nation’s small business is to buy things from them.

That is especially true right now, when the economy is ailing and small business owners are complaining that they don’t need loans … they need customers.

As a matter of fact, that really is the thinking behind all that federal infrastructure spending contemplated in the economic stimulus package affectionately known as ARRA.

Only that plan isn’t working as well as its proponents would have liked and there’s a reason for that.

As a general matter, microbusiness owners don’t want to sell things to the federal government badly enough to torture themselves in order to do it.

The federal marketplace is a buyers’ market if ever there was one. If the feds are serious about buying from small businesses, then they will make that marketplace easy for a microbusiness to navigate.

By all means, get rid of the contract bundling and ride herd on those bad-faith prime contractors that mistreat their subcontractors-on-paper.

But, while you are trying to do those things — which you have been trying to do for years, oddly enough — bear in mind that relatively few small businesses are going to even approach the federal marketplace in its current condition.

The degree to which lawmakers are willing to face up to that fact and do something about it is a demonstration of the degree to which they mean it when they say they want to open the federal marketplace to small businesses.

Or, if you prefer, it’s a demonstration of the degree to which they can behave like crazy people … and get away with it.