A graphic from Open The Books' new report highlights how overlays have expanded at nearly five-times the rate of federal bureaucracy. (Open The Books)
Currently, the federal workforce is costing American taxpayers $673,000 per minute, $40.4 million per hour and just under $1 billion per day, according to Open The Books. This includes almost 1,000 workers who are out-earning the president's $400,000 per year salary, 31,452 non-War Department federal employees who out-earned every governor of all 50 states, and 793,537 people making $100,000 or more. Those making $300,000 or more have seen an 84% increase since 2020, while there has similarly been an 82% increase in those earning $200,000 or more, the report points out.
Meanwhile, during Open The Book's investigation, the fiscal watchdog group also found that the names of 383,000 federal workers across 56 different agencies were redacted, amounting to a total of $38.3 billion in pay. According to Open The Books CEO John Hart, "You can't have accountability without visibility."
"The Trump administration has a historic opportunity to bring much-needed transparency to the administrative state. While federal employees don't add as much to the debt as safety net programs, defense, and overall agency spending, they are an indicator of government's 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 fixed. You can't have accountability without visibility. Taxpayers need a much clearer picture of the federal workforce than they have today."
U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, has been working with Open The Books to fight for greater transparency. In a letter sent in September to Scott Kupor, the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Ernst said she had identified "numerous examples" of full-time federal employees earning two salaries while moonlighting for other agencies or government contractors – something that is typically prohibited under the law. Ernst pointed out that this was being done without the approval or knowledge of these workers' managers.
A picture of the U.S. capitol building in Washington D.C. surrounded by falling money. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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In October, Ernst introduced the Non-Essential Workers Transparency Act, aimed at providing the public with an exact accounting of how much back pay the government will be required to fork over in the case of a shutdown.
The bill would require executive agencies to submit detailed reports to Congress within 30 days of a lapse in appropriations that must include the total number of employees and contractors employed by the agency at the time of the shutdown, the total salaries paid by the agency during the prior fiscal year, the number of furloughed during the lapse and their annual pay, the number of employees not furloughed and the sum of their pay, and a requirement that all this information be posted publicly on the agencies' websites.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/big-paychecks-bigger-problems-how-bloated-bureaucracy-exposes-congress-funding-failure