WTOV News 9 host Angela Brown opened her segment with a blunt claim: federal spending per person has jumped almost 100-fold since 1916, and she said that kind of growth is tied to what she called the “vast administrative state.”
Brown set the tone like this isn’t just a budget story. In her framing, the bigger government gets, the more it “feeds the waste, fraud and abuse” that groups like Open the Books say they track week after week.
To walk viewers through the numbers, Brown brought on Rachel O’Brien, the deputy public policy editor for Open the Books. O’Brien came armed with a single statistic meant to stop you cold.
O’Brien told Brown that in fiscal year 2025, the federal government spent $20,474 per person living in the country. She described it as a record that adds up to more than $7 trillion.
And right away, O’Brien tried to shut down the easiest excuse people reach for. She told Brown this is “not due to inflation,” and she called it “real growth” in federal spending per person, adjusted into today’s dollars.
That distinction matters because inflation can explain a lot, but it can also hide a lot. When someone says the number is inflation-adjusted, they’re saying the growth is more than just higher prices – it’s a bigger federal footprint.
Where The Money Is Going, According To Open The Books
Angela Brown asked the obvious follow-up: if spending is up, what is it being “attributed to?” O’Brien’s answer wasn’t a mystery list of secret programs.
O’Brien told Brown that a big chunk of the increase is driven by Social Security, especially because it has more beneficiaries than the year before. She also pointed to higher payments tied to cost-of-living adjustments.
Then she added the two other giants people argue about every election cycle: Medicare and Medicaid. O’Brien said those programs have seen higher spending too, and she pinned much of it on rising health care costs.
She also gave a quick recent timeline that makes the trend easier to picture. O’Brien said that back in 2019, before the pandemic, spending was just over $17,000 per person.
Then, as she put it, the figure “exploded” to almost $25,000 in 2020 and 2021, driven by the pandemic. O’Brien said it’s been above $20,000 ever since.
That little timeline is a reminder of something people often forget. Once government spending jumps for an emergency, it rarely falls all the way back to where it started, even after the emergency ends.
And that’s where the frustration starts to set in. People hear “spending per person” and naturally ask the same thing Brown raised on air: how much of it actually helps the average taxpayer, and how much gets chewed up by waste.
“Oversize” Agencies, Defunct Offices, And A Federal Machine That Won’t Shrink
Angela Brown then pushed the conversation toward what she called the “ballooning” administrative state, and she asked how much that sheer size plays into waste, fraud, and abuse.
O’Brien answered with a number that sounded almost like a trick question. She said the Federal Register lists 441 federal agencies.
But Open the Books, she explained, went through them and found 75 were defunct. O’Brien said that leaves 366 agencies still active, which she called “still way oversize.”
Even if a person likes big government, that “defunct” detail should bother them. A government that can’t even keep its public list clean is a government that makes it harder for taxpayers to follow the money.
O’Brien also made a point that hits regular people where they live: when the system gets bigger, it gets “more secretive.” She told Brown that agencies are redacting names more than before.
O’Brien said that midway through the Obama administration there were about 2,600 names redacted from lists of civilian employees. Now, she said, it’s about 350,000 redactions.
That’s a stunning leap, and it raises a basic question that doesn’t even require political bias: what is being protected, and why is secrecy expanding so fast?
If the public is told to trust the system, but the system won’t even tell the public who is on the payroll, trust doesn’t grow. Suspicion does.
“Use It Or Lose It” Spending And The DoD’s September Spree
At the heart of O’Brien’s critique was a phrase that longtime federal watchers know well: “use it or lose it.”
O’Brien told Angela Brown that some agencies go on a spending spree at the end of the fiscal year so they don’t lose unused parts of their budget. She called that wasteful spending, money pushed out the door simply to protect next year’s funding.
Then she pointed to one agency as the “worst culprit.” O’Brien told Brown that the Department of Defense spent $79 billion in September of the previous year.
That’s the kind of number that makes people blink, because it doesn’t sound like a normal month of careful planning. It sounds like a deadline.
Now, to be fair, defense spending isn’t like buying office chairs. It involves contracts, supply chains, and long schedules that can pile up near the end of the year.
But even with that context, a “spree” mindset is dangerous. When you reward agencies for spending everything, you basically punish them for saving money.
That’s the opposite of how real households live. Most families don’t get “bonus points” for emptying their bank account before the end of the month.
So when taxpayers hear that logic applied to trillions, it’s not shocking that people feel like the system is built to grow, not to behave.
Earmarks, “Currency Of Corruption,” And Why Transparency Is The Punchline
O’Brien also targeted earmarks, and she didn’t soften her language. She told Angela Brown that earmarks have been called “the currency of corruption.”
She described them as pork handed out to favorite constituencies with no oversight, calling them ripe for waste, fraud, and abuse. In her telling, earmarks came back after being banned for 11 years.
And O’Brien said that during the years earmarks were gone, Open the Books estimates the country saved $141 billion.
That claim will land differently depending on your politics. Some people see earmarks as lawmakers doing local projects. Others see them as legalized back-scratching.
But O’Brien’s “currency” line is memorable because it frames earmarks less like budgeting and more like trading favors. And once people start thinking in those terms, every spending item begins to look like a deal behind the curtain.
O’Brien’s broader theme was simple: as the federal workforce grows, the public’s ability to see what it does is shrinking. That’s a bad combination.
Big government plus low visibility is how you get outrage on both sides – one side says the machine is corrupt, the other says the machine is incompetent. Sometimes it can be both.
The “Where’s The Workforce Act” And A New Push To Show The Public The Receipts
Angela Brown then turned to a proposed fix, and she framed it as an attempt to fill “major gaps” in transparency.
O’Brien told Brown that Sen. Joni Ernst has introduced something called the Where’s the Workforce Act – and she said it’s also being called the “Where’s Waldo Act.” O’Brien explained the nickname is partly because people couldn’t even find where employees were stationed.
O’Brien said the bill would create a public database of civilian federal employees. She emphasized this is about civilian agencies, not active-duty military.
According to O’Brien, the database would let people search the title of each position, the description of duties, what agency the person works for, where they’re stationed, and what they’re paid. She said it would include base and total pay, and it would highlight the duty station – which became a “hot topic” after the pandemic.
O’Brien said that after the emergency phase ended, many workers continued working remotely and even moved around the country while still tied to jobs that had official duty stations elsewhere. In her view, taxpayers deserve to know where the workforce actually is.
O’Brien also admitted that Open the Books can compile a lot of this information now, but not all of it, because so much is redacted. She pitched the act as a way to make the information available to “anyone who wants to search it.”
Here’s the part that sticks with me: you can debate the size of government forever, but you shouldn’t have to debate whether the public is allowed to see the basic structure of its own workforce.
If an agency’s mission is legitimate, it shouldn’t be terrified of being listed. And if a job is necessary, the public should be able to understand what it is, where it’s done, and what it costs.
Angela Brown’s segment and O’Brien’s responses left viewers with a clear picture: federal spending per person is at a record level, the number of agencies is sprawling even after you remove the defunct ones, and the systems that should make spending easier to track are moving in the opposite direction.
That’s the kind of setup that doesn’t just spark a policy debate. It sparks public anger – because when people feel squeezed at home, they don’t want to hear that Washington is on autopilot, spending on reflex, and hiding the roster.
Mark grew up in the heart of Texas, where tornadoes and extreme weather were a part of life. His early experiences sparked a fascination with emergency preparedness and homesteading. A father of three, Mark is dedicated to teaching families how to be self-sufficient, with a focus on food storage, DIY projects, and energy independence. His writing empowers everyday people to take small steps toward greater self-reliance without feeling overwhelmed.
