The Federal Budget Is a Monument to Fraud, Waste, and Stupidity

How Much Are They Really Spending?

The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, collected $4.92 trillion in revenue, and borrowed the remaining $1.83 trillion, pushing the gross national debt past $36 trillion. Those numbers mean that roughly one dollar in every four the government spends is borrowed from future taxpayers.

The Treasury Department's own figures show the debt has more than doubled since 2013, when it stood at about $16.7 trillion. Interest on that debt is no longer a minor budget line. In fiscal year 2024, net interest payments reached $882 billion, exceeding the $842 billion appropriated for national defense. Americans are now paying more to finance yesterday's spending than to defend themselves today.

The Congressional Budget Office projects deficits will remain near $1.9 trillion annually through the end of the decade unless policy changes. Those projections assume no recession, no new wars, and no emergency spending bills. History suggests all three will arrive. The debt is not a forecast; it is a guarantee.

Where Does the Money Actually Go?

Most federal spending goes to transfer payments, debt service, and salaries for a civilian workforce that now exceeds two million people, with the rest scattered across thousands of grant programs that few lawmakers read before voting. The waste is not a bug in the system; it is the system's main product.

The Government Accountability Office reported $236 billion in improper payments in fiscal year 2023. That total includes overpayments, payments to ineligible recipients, and outright fraud across Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and other programs. The Department of Health and Human Services accounted for the largest share. One agency's accounting errors alone would fund a small navy.

The Pentagon offers its own master class in opacity. The Department of Defense has failed seven consecutive independent audits since it began attempting a full department-wide review in 2018. Auditors cannot account for trillions of dollars in assets. Generals and contractors respond with promises, press releases, and requests for more money.

Then there are the grants. The National Institutes of Health has funded studies of cocaine's effects on bees, romance among monkeys, and treadmill endurance in mountain lions. Each project cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. The researchers publish papers no one reads while the debt clock ticks faster.

Why Bureaucracy Protects Waste

Bureaucracies defend waste because every failed program creates a lobby of employees, contractors, and congressional committees who profit from its continuation, and because Congress writes budgets in secret then passes them hours before a shutdown. The process is designed to hide responsibility, not to restrain spending.

The modern budget process is a conveyor belt. Agencies start with last year's spending as a baseline and request increases. Congress bundles twelve appropriations bills into thousand-page omnibus packages released days before a deadline. Members vote on legislation they have not read because leadership threatens a government shutdown. No one is fired when the money disappears.

Baseline budgeting rigs the game. A program that spent $1 billion last year is assumed to need $1.05 billion this year. A proposed increase to $1.03 billion is denounced as a cut by the agency, its contractors, and its congressional patrons. The press repeats the word cut without asking whether the program should exist at all.

The result is a federal workforce that grows whether Republicans or Democrats hold power. Executive branch civilian employment, excluding the Postal Service and uniformed military, stands above two million. Each employee has a supervisor, a union representative, and a congressman who wants the district's jobs protected. Waste becomes a constituency.

What Real Cuts Would Look Like

Real cuts would close entire departments, sell federal assets, freeze discretionary spending, and require every program to prove its worth or die, because trimming growth rates only slows the debt spiral instead of stopping it. Americans deserve a government that lives within its means.

Start with the easy targets. The Department of Education has spent half a century and hundreds of billions of dollars while test scores stagnated. Return education policy to states and local school boards. End USAID's corporate welfare disguised as foreign development. Sell unused federal buildings and land that agencies admit they no longer need.

Move on to entitlements. The Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation have both proposed raising the retirement age and means-testing benefits for wealthy seniors. These ideas are politically difficult because they affect voters directly. They are also unavoidable because the alternative is national insolvency.

Finally, change the process. Require a balanced budget amendment with a war exception. Force a single-subject rule on appropriations bills so lawmakers cannot hide pet projects in must-pass legislation. Sunset every federal program after ten years unless Congress explicitly reauthorizes it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and expiration dates are the best sunlight.

The libertarian answer is not to manage the bureaucracy better. It is to make the bureaucracy smaller until it cannot waste what it does not have. That requires politicians willing to be called cruel by the people who profit from waste. Courage is the only line item that cannot be outsourced.