Watchdog says DC swamp has gotten bigger, richer and more secretive since 2020

FIRST ON FOX: A new report from a government watchdog group raises the question of why — with nearly 800,000 federal bureaucrats earning six-figure salaries and the average federal workforce payroll far exceeding its size — is Washington still unable to fund the basics of government?

Open The Books, a project of American Transparency, a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)3 charitable organization, closely tracks government spending and released a detailed report Wednesday ahead of an imminent deal between Republicans and Democrats to reopen the government, showing that the swamp has become bigger, richer and more secretive since 2020.

The report, which analyzes all publicly reported federal salaries for fiscal year 2024, reveals a total of 2.9 million public employees with a total payroll of $270 billion, plus an additional 30% for benefits. While the total number of employees has increased by 5% since 2020, payroll has increased almost five times as much.

ED DEPARTMENT EXPENSES Soared 749% Despite Downsizing, New Doge-Inspired Initiative Reveals

A chart from Open The Books’ new report shows how overlays have grown at a rate nearly five times that of the federal bureaucracy. (Open the books)

The current federal workforce costs U.S. taxpayers $673,000 per minute, $40.4 million per hour and just under $1 billion per day, according to Open The Books. That includes nearly 1,000 workers who earn more than the president’s $400,000 annual salary, 31,452 federal employees not assigned to the War Department who earn more than any governor in all 50 states, and 793,537 people earning $100,000 or more. Those earning $300,000 or more have seen an 84% increase since 2020, while there has also been an 82% increase among those earning $200,000 or more, the report highlights.

During Open The Book’s investigation, the tax watchdog group also discovered that the names of 383,000 federal employees from 56 different agencies had been redacted, representing a total of $38.3 billion in salaries. According to John Hart, CEO of Open The Books, “there is no accountability without visibility”.

“The Trump administration has a historic opportunity to bring much-needed transparency to the administrative state. Although federal employees do not add as much to the debt as safety net programs, defense and overall agency spending, they are a proxy for government growth,” Hart said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“Our investigators found far too many redactions and blind spots that DOGE should have already corrected. There is no accountability without visibility. Taxpayers need a much clearer picture of the federal workforce than today.”

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, has worked with Open The Books to fight for greater transparency. In a September letter to Scott Kupor, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Ernst said he identified “numerous examples” of full-time federal employees earning two salaries while moonlighting for other government agencies or contractors, which is generally prohibited by law. Ernst stressed that this was being done without the approval or knowledge of these workers’ leaders.

FAR-LEFT FIREBRAND SPENDS AN EXHAUSTING AMOUNT OF CAMPAIGN MONEY ON LUXURY HOTELS AND “TOP LEVEL” LIMO SERVICES

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, (center) speaks on Capitol Hill alongside Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-WVa.; Steve Daines, R-Mont; and John Thune, R.S.D. (Reuters)

“From 2021 to 2024, a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) employee worked several other full-time jobs at a government contractor, frequently billing taxpayers for more than 24 hours of work in a single day,” Ernst recounted in his letter. “In addition to HUD, she was paid by AmeriCorps and the National Institutes of Health. Because she teleworked across all three positions, she was able to hide her overlapping jobs and bill taxpayers $225,866 for hours she never worked. She claimed to have worked 26 hours on 13 of 21 work days in a single month.”

Ernst also described a second example of a Peace Corps human resources manager who was caught falsifying timecards submitted to different agencies, leading the employee to bill taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. She also presented several other examples in the letter.

“Until recently, aside from death and taxes, Washington’s growing bureaucracy was one of the few certainties in life,” Ernst said. “I’m proud to have partnered with the Trump administration and DOGE to successfully reduce bloated bureaucracy, but there is still much work to do to make Washington more efficient.”

One can “look no further” than “Schumer’s failed shutdown,” Ernst said, noting that taxpayers will have to pay more than $12 billion in back pay for 750,000 non-essential federal employees who haven’t worked for a month and a half.

The US Capitol building in Washington, DC (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

In October, Ernst introduced the Non-Essential Worker Transparency Act, aimed at providing the public with an accurate accounting of how much back pay the government will have to pay out in the event of a shutdown.

The bill would require executive agencies to submit detailed reports to Congress within 30 days of an expiration of appropriations, which must include the total number of employees and contractors employed by the agency at the time of the closure, the total salaries paid by the agency during the preceding fiscal year, the number of individuals furloughed during the expiration period and their annual salaries, the number of employees not furloughed and the amount of their salaries, and requiring all such information be publicly published on agency websites.