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. Apologist 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.
In 2013 the Government Accountability Office was tasked to review federal performance management systems across the 24 CFO Act agencies. After reviewing OPM data for calendar year, the GAO reported that more than 99% of non-Senior Executive Service employees received a rating of fully successful or higher. This is simply not credible.
If anything, federal workers should be subject to more scrutiny and should have to present tangible results on a regular basis. The GAO's data was ignored because that's how the GAO works, and the easy security of federal employment continued without disruption. This is why the actions of DOGE are triggering government workers so hard - They have never faced true meritocracy before.
Many of them have never worked in the private sector and don't understand that they are in fact subject to review and to firing if they don't meet the standards of their employers (the American people). They think they are untouchable. They think performance reviews are tyranny. They think they shouldn't have to answer to anyone.
The level of panic and indignant behavior among fed workers over a simple email from DOGE asking "what they accomplished last week" tells us everything we need to know about the bureaucrat culture. The email, which should take anyone 10 minutes to answer, is treated as "harassment" and a "distraction" from their work.
Keep in mind, the email was not necessarily meant to act as a performance indicator; it was a test to see who responds and who does not. The people who refused to respond simply outed themselves as a potential problem to be removed later. For those that are being fired for poor performance the claim of "outstanding reviews" under the previous administration don't hold water. As noted, it's proven that the government maintains a participation trophy culture - Everyone is a winner no matter how incompetent.
The concept of meritocracy is so alien to the federal system that basic job requirements common to almost every company in the country are seen as acts of abuse. Add in the freak show of DEI hiring and you have a recipe for financial disaster.
It's not unfair to compare the waste within the government to the waste at the original Twitter. Musk eliminated 80% of twitter staff after purchasing the platform and the company actually functioned better without them. We will probably see the same results with the federal system over time.