How Government Agencies & Departments Grow
LOOK FAMILIAR
PLEASE NOTE: The following is not intended to discredit the untold thousands of Public Service Employees who go to work everyday to keep the lights on, the streets safe, our children educated, Social Security checks and services ongoing and so many other essential public services needed by all of us. This is about corrupted officials who have maintained some public agencies and departments long past their useful life and/or used their positions to enrich themselves at the taxpayers expense.
My Hero, Elon Musk, and the DOGE Crew are going where no one has dared go before and they are finding in government what too many of us have done on a smaller scale. Overflowing Agencies and Departments, or in our case Garages and Storage Units, filled with the oft forgotten, frequently broken debris of yesteryear that for some reason we never get around to discarding or disposing of and instead pay a price to maintain year after year. Too many Government Agencies, Departments and programs are like that.
Here is an anonymous story which tells the sad tale of how government too often works:
Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, “Someone may steal from it at night”. So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job. Then Congress said, “how does the watchman do his job without instruction?”
So they created a planning department and hired two people. One person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies. Then Congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?” So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people. One was to do the studies and one was to write the reports.
Then Congress said, “how are these people going to get paid?” So they created two positions: a time keeper and a payroll officer, then hired two people. Then Congress said, “Who will be accountable for all of these people?” So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.
Then Congress said, “We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $918,000 over budget, we must cut back.”
So they laid off the night watchman. (but kept the department and all other spending intact indefinitely)
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Another example taken from an article I wrote back in 2018 titled STORAGE WARS AND THE GOVERNMENT uses as an example the United States Department of Energy is excerpted below:
“Our government is filled with departments and agencies on steroids which have metasticized past their original intent and charter, have budgets in the Billions and employees in the tens of thousands.
There are dozens of excellent examples of Government Departments and Agencies that began life as a well intended, “We’ve got to do something” pregnant thought in the mind of a bureaucrat.
One good example of how government programs become bloated, employee heavy, overgrown, self sustaining, ineffective, unnecessary rat holes for tax dollars can be seen in the U.S. Department of Energy.
Created in 1977 it was originally chartered to make the U.S. independent from the need for foreign oil. What it has become is a Thirty Two Billion Dollar a year, Ten Thousand plus employee boondoggle.
What was really needed was an examination of government policies and regulations that was choking the life out of energy producers.
Forty years and about a Trillion Dollars later the Department of Energy never met its original goal.
We are now trembling on the verge of becoming energy independent, not because of the Department of Energy but by getting government out of the way of private market energy producers.
Are we hearing any plans to shut down, or downsize of the Department of Energy? No!”
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Unfortunately the DOGE group are also finding waste and corruption beyond just run-a-way departments on steroids that waste our tax dollars. Government Employees and Politicians that have “salaries” in the hundred thousand’s of dollars per year but in a few short years are multi-millionaires. “Lucky guesses on investments/insider trading?” – “Finders Fees/kickbacks” on “paid out government grants to domestic or foreign recipients?” “Money trees in their back yards?” “Hit the lottery?”
I find it kind of humorous that those who are trying to stop the DOGE group are putting themselves in a position defending Government Waste, Fraud, Abuse and outright Theft of Taxpayers Dollars.
Something to think about,
Bob Bandy – February 2025
