FLABBY FEDS: More Agency Spending Data Revealed

We’re mapping the growth of government over the decades, agency by agency.

This month Open the Books auditors took a closer look at the Federal Register – the official publication of the U.S. government. It publishes every new rule and regulation, every Executive Order and Congressional hearing, and much more. It should be a reliable encyclopedia of government, but we found at least 75 of the 441 entities listed were defunct – defunded, disbanded, renamed, merged with another entity, completed their mission, etc.

We all know waste is rampant – but this was more evidence that federal recordkeeping is also a big mess. The scope and complexity of the task before DOGE became even clearer in this context.

So we set out to catalog every agency that reports data – not just their current costs, but the size of their staffs and spending stretching back decades. The result will be the clearest picture yet of government’s growth over time.

We released the first batch of data last week, tracking spending and headcounts for big Cabinet-level agencies like the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Education; as well as more obscure, independent ones like the Administrative Conference of the United States.

At agency after agency, we found spending outstripped growth of the staff and even inflation – often many times over.

THE NEW BATCH

This week’s batch of agencies revealed more of the same troubling trend.

Click here to view the full list of agencies we’ve assessed, growing by the week! And keep reading for more stunning examples.

The list now includes additional Cabinet agencies – Departments of Energy, Commerce, Labor, Interior, and State – and more news making independent agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

BY THE NUMBERS

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been grabbing headlines after new Administrator Lee Zeldin’s team uncovered $20 billion parked at Citibank. It’s an attempt by the outgoing Biden administration to ensure cash for their green energy and “environmental justice” agenda was guaranteed to be awarded to outside organizations. Zeldin may need to work through the courts to claw back the money previously poised for distribution.

Headcount at the EPA actually shrank from 2000 to 2024, in part due to efforts from the first Trump administration. The staff was 18,956 deep in 2000 and by 2024 it was 16,450 – 13.2% smaller.

But expenditures, soared during the same period, from $7.2 billion in 2000 to over $41.1 billion by 2024 –- that’s 569.5% higher! Unsurprisingly, nearly ALL of the increase happened between since 2020, when spending was still sitting at just $8.7 billion.

During the Biden era, spending rose over 471%. Yes, the EPA nearly quintupled its spending in a few short years.

Included was the creation of an EPA Office of Environmental Justice, which a staffer told the Washington Post would become “part of the institutional fabric” of the EPA and would take “a hell of a lot to unravel.” The infrastructure law steered $60 billion to the EPA for 2022-26, while the Inflation Reduction Act pitched in another $41.5 billion, including $3 billion worth of climate and environmental justice block grants.

As late as December 2024 and January 2025, the agency was still distributing hundreds of grants.

Over at the Department of Energy, staff has indeed grown since 2000. Again though, we found spending had soared much faster. Staffers numbered 16,846 in 2024, only 6.7% more than the 15,787 employed in 2000. But outlays? They had grown 389.7%! Again, the steepest spike came in the most recent four years.

One recent lightning-rod issue at the agency was its adoption of a number of new efficiency standards for household appliances under the Biden administration. The Department argued in December that the efficiency rules for air conditioning, washers, dryers and more would help consumers save on energy bills and cut carbon emissions. The Trump administration will instead halt those rules. On February 14, new Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the move would save consumers on appliance purchases instead: “Today’s announcement will foster consumer choice and lower prices ... the people, not the government, should be choosing the home appliances and products they want at prices they can afford.”

Moving West toward Foggy Bottom, growth of the Department of State presented a now all-too-familiar scenario. By 2024, headcount was 26.6% smaller than it was in 2000. But spending exploded at a confounding rate. Last year, outlays were 557.7% higher than they had been in 2000 ($6.69 billion).

Secretary Marco Rubio has quickly taken steps to cut a combined $60 billion in future spending from both State and USAID (which Open the Books profiled last week here). From The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra:

“’The State Department evaluated over 9,100 grants worth over $15.9 billion,’ an internal government document obtained by The Daily Wire reads. ‘At the conclusion of an exhaustive review led by career FSOs and reviewed by senior political leadership, including the Secretary, over 4,100 grants worth nearly $4.4 billion were identified for elimination — a 28 percent reduction in total grant value over the course of the 15-day review.”

For one more example, we took a look at an independent agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The ranks inside the FCC shrank since 2000. By 2024, headcount was 21.6% smaller than in 2000 (1,534 vs. 1,956). But annual spending had grown consistently since 2000 – and then astronomically since 2020. By 2024, annual spending was 1,194.6% higher!

Since the millennium, the FCC didn’t double or triple its spending – it spent over 10 times as much annually!

Once again, the full list of agencies we’ve charted is here. Check back next week as we release the final batch of federal agencies, offering taxpayers a complete picture – with historical context – of their growing government.