What, Exactly, Does The Federal Government Do? The World May Never Know

In just the first five months of the new fiscal year, the federal government has already spent more than $3 trillion – more than it spent in all of 2009 – $1 trillion of which it had to borrow.

And what is all this money going toward? The federal government was told 15 years ago to take a full, annual inventory of everything it does. It’s never been able to get that done.

“Each year, the federal government spends trillions of dollars on federal programs that support the American people and address policy goals,” notes the Government Accountability Office in a report released earlier this month. “However, it does not have a full inventory of these programs.”

That’s despite the fact that it’s been required to do so since 2011.

That law, signed by Barack Obama that January, requires a single, comprehensive list of federal programs that’s supposed to be posted on a website.

But of the 20 requirements contained in the law – for things such as identifying each program, listing program activities, whether they contribute to an agency’s mission and goals, and how much money went to management – the current inventory met only seven in 2025.

As the GAO correctly put it:

A comprehensive listing of programs, along with related funding and performance information, would help federal decision-makers and the public better understand what the government does, what it spends, and what it achieves each year.

Without a complete inventory, decision-makers lack a critical tool to help them better identify and manage fragmentation, overlap, and duplication across the federal government.

Sounds reasonable. For 15 years, the GAO has prodded and cajoled the federal government, but to no avail.

“That’s not merely a sad commentary on the sprawling size and eye-watering cost of the government. It’s also a violation of federal law,” notes Eric Boehm, a reporter at Reason magazine.

Sure, we know the broad contours of what the government does. We know how much money is spent and how much of it goes into each department. We have some idea of how much is lost to fraud. We occasionally learn about some whacked-out program. But there’s no single place that lists program the federal government operates.

An annual inventory – one that is easily accessible to the public online – would make it easy for regular citizens to find out how much is lost to waste and duplication, how many projects aren’t on mission, or are at cross-purposes, much is being spent on management. You know, useful information like that.

But not only is there little interest in conducting a complete inventory of the federal government. There’s open hostility – which we saw with the attacks from Washington insiders against DOGE’s work.

The denizens of the swamp don’t want transparency. They want the water to be murky. Because that’s the only way they can keep their pet projects going.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board