It costs more to be an American now than it did five years ago—more than 50 percent more. The U.S. government spent more than half again as much in 2024 as it did in 2019, and interest payments on the national debt more than doubled during that time, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Since 2019, federal spending, the national debt, and the size of the federal bureaucracy have all grown rapidly. Federal regulations also increased over the half-decade, with some 290 additional rules and nearly 10 million words added to administrative law books.
President Donald Trump’s effort to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, mainly through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has met with some early success. There have also been roadblocks in the form of legal challenges and public protests.
I've worked in private sector half my career, did a stint for the local municipality and state DOT then had both as clients and am not working in the federal sector. The WASTE is staggering! The bureaucracy is even more staggering. I've been waiting a full quarter for my contracting officer to award a contract. Literally, all he has to do is approve it. All the paperwork is filled out, but they have to get Small Biz, Legal, etc. all the typical BS to approve a task order for an existing contract. The Federal Authorization Regulations will be the death of us all...size of the Texas Yellow Pages.
When I started working for them, the software they had us using at the time, I had stopped using at least a decade prior. It's now 16 years later and very little progress has been made so perhaps we are 20+ years behind the curve.
There is no single factor you can point to as the problem as it is purely systemic from top to bottom.
---------- “Nobody can ever take your integrity away from you. Only you can give up your integrity.” H. Norman Schwarzkopf
Originally posted by jcsabolt2: I've worked in private sector half my career, did a stint for the local municipality and state DOT then had both as clients and am not working in the federal sector. The WASTE is staggering! The bureaucracy is even more staggering. . . . There is no single factor you can point to as the problem as it is purely systemic from top to bottom.
The single factor is spending other people's money for the purpose of creating long term job security. In our personal lives we make decisions based on our own perceived needs and wants, with instant accountability when the credit card bill comes in!
There is little to no true government accountability on how taxpayer money is spent, because even at local levels the budgets are complex and too big for taxpayers to understand, and there is an endless list of feel-good things to spend it on. At the state and national level, much spending is borrowed money, so it is even more distant from accountability.
Posts: 10363 | Location: On the mountain off the grid | Registered: February 25, 2002
I chased around in the internet, hoping to find the source for this, as I really wanted to be able to document it. Unfortunately, every fact-check reference that I was able to find, said that it was false.
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Posts: 32507 | Location: Central Florida, Orlando area | Registered: January 03, 2010
