Not all people who are attracted to government employment are searching for a cushy job with limited work load and even less oversight, but most aren’t working for agencies like the IRS, ATF or USAID because of patriotic duty. In reality, federal bureaucrats act as if they’ve found a cheat code to life. And until the arrival of Elon Musk’s DOGE audits, that assumption was generally true.
As Dan Aykroyd’s character Ray Stantz notes in the movie Ghostbusters:
“Personally, I liked working for the university. They gave us money and facilities. We didn’t have to produce anything. You’ve never been out of college. You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve worked in the private sector … they expect results!”
For decades it’s been a running joke that government employees do very little while collecting a generous paycheck. For American taxpayers, however, the joke’s not so funny. DOGE audits have exposed considerable waste and fraud within the system. Apologists in the media argue that most of this information was available to anyone willing to look, but this is a misrepresentation of the bigger problem.
Until recently no one had collated spending data in way that is easy for the average American to reference and track. In fact, digging up this information is made as frustrating as possible, likely to dissuade people from investigating for themselves. The Government Accountability Office doesn’t do it; if anything they pretend to scrutinize various agencies while covering for their mismanagement. When it comes to government waste the phrase that leaps to mind is “hidden in plain sight”.
“Waste” and “fraud” are the only words to describe the situation with federal employment – In 2024 there were over 3 million workers, the most since 1994, collecting around $270 billion annually (including benefits). Federal supervisors are incentivized to give average to outstanding employee performance reviews in order to avoid employee and union backlash, as well as negative attention for their department. It is often noted that government work has bred a culture of “conflict avoidance”. In other words, merit is not their top priority.
In the past various establishment media outlets have admitted to this trend. The Washington Post in 2016 noted that only 0.1% of federal employees ever get a negative performance review.