e True Size of Government 1984-2020
Year
In 1940, total federal employment was under 700,000, federal contrac- tors minimal. By 2014, we topped two million. Today, 2.85 million employees exist, with 5000 contractors, many paying tens of thousands of employ- ees. Within any given department, on any given day, the numbers keep rising, uncapped. Sliced differently, as federal agencies and contractors multiply, oversight and accountability recede, becom- ing harder and harder. Thus, with roughly 500 federal agencies, we watch contracts proliferate — often for things no one wants or can afford, yet elites in government, tied to contractors, buy anyway.
Thus, the Government Accountabil- ity Office (GAO) reports that in 2020, even before the major COVID spend- ing wave, the federal government spent $665 billion on contracts, a $70 billion jump over 2019. Lots of contracting tricks, meant to solve problems, only add to them. For example, contracts falling outside federal acquisition regulation — which slows the process — jumped from $1.6 billion in 2016 to $16.5 billion in 2020. That is a tenfold increase in four years, or rampant acceleration. Other data is sobering. Over the past hundred years, federal debt — on which we pay interest, often to foreign nationals — has gone from $408 billion to $31 trillion. Since
Ronald Reagan’s tenure, it has accel- erated from $1 trillion to the current record, with no end in sight. So, our current federal debt is 75 times what it was a century ago, more than 30 times what it was 35 years ago, with interest going vertical. Putting aside vulnerability to foreign countries buying our debt, like China — monetary policy, that is the Federal Reserve, which regulates interest, cannot keep up. As overspending grows — compounded by senseless cuts in energy production — inflation naturally takes off. The reason is obvious. If the govern- ment spends more than it takes in, it must print money not backed by real wealth, so the value of each dollar
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20 • AMAC Magazine
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