Chris Edwards and Nicole Kaeding of the Cato Institute have issued a new report this week on the federal government’s struggles to complete projects within their budgets.

The federal government proceeds with large projects on the basis of estimated costs, but once projects get underway officials often revise the costs upward.

Cost overruns have plagued the federal government since the beginning. Way back in 1836, for example, a Ways and Means Committee report criticized infrastructure spending by the Army Corps of Engineers. All 25 projects reviewed by the committee that year were overbudget, and “many” had cost overruns of 50 percent or more.

Economists Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff studied a sample of major government infrastructure projects in U.S. history and found that most had substantial cost overruns.

The construction of the Erie Canal between 1817 and 1825, for example, went 46 percent overbudget, while the canal’s later expansion went 142 percent overbudget.

In recent years, many federal projects have had large cost overruns. The cost to create the Healthcare.gov website launched in 2013 grew from $464 million to $824 million. The International Space Station more than quadrupled in cost from $17 billion to $74 billion. The Capitol Visitor Center in Washington soared in cost from an initial $265 million to $621 million by the time it was completed in 2008.

Cost overruns have plagued hospital construction by the Department of Veterans Affairs. A hospital currently being built in Orlando has more than doubled in cost from $254 million to $616 million. And a hospital being built near Denver has quintupled in cost from $328 million to $1.7 billion.

Cost overruns on government projects are a global phenomenon.