Government 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 questions about why Washington is still unable to fund the basics of government when nearly 800,000 federal employees earn six-figure salaries and the average federal employee payroll far exceeds their size.

Open The Books, a project of American Transparency – a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan charity, closely tracks government spending and released a detailed report Wednesday ahead of a looming deal between Republicans and Democrats to reopen the government that shows the swamp has gotten bigger, richer and more secretive since 2020.

The report, which analyzed all publicly disclosed federal salaries for fiscal year 2024, found 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 increased by 5% since 2020, the wage bill grew almost fivefold.

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According to Open The Books, federal employment currently costs American taxpayers $673,000 per minute, $40.4 million per hour, and just under $1 billion per day. That includes nearly 1,000 workers who earn more than the president’s salary of $400,000 a year, 31,452 federal employees outside the War Department who earn more than all the governors of all 50 states, and 793,537 people who earn $100,000 or more. The report notes that those earning $300,000 or more saw an 84% increase since 2020, while those earning $200,000 or more also saw an 82% increase.

During Open The Book’s investigation, the financial regulator also found that the names of 383,000 federal employees across 56 different agencies were redacted, representing a total of $38.3 billion in salaries. According to John Hart, CEO of Open The Books, “Without visibility, there can be no accountability.”

“The Trump administration has a historic opportunity to bring much-needed transparency to the administrative state. While federal employees do not contribute as much to the debt as safety net programs, defense and overall agency spending, they are an indicator of 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 addressed. Without transparency, there can be no accountability. Taxpayers need a much clearer picture of the federal workforce than they have today.”

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, has worked with Open The Books to fight for greater transparency. In a letter sent in September to Scott Kupor, 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 also working for other agencies or government contractors – something that is typically prohibited by law. Ernst pointed out that this was done without the consent or knowledge of these workers’ supervisors.

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“From 2021 to 2024, a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) employee often held several other full-time jobs as a government contractor Billing with the taxpayer for more than 24 hours of work in a single day,” Ernst wrote in her letter. “In addition to HUD, she was paid by AmeriCorps and the National Institutes of Health.” Because she teleworked in all three positions, she was able to hide her overlapping jobs and got away with billing taxpayers $225,866 for hours she never worked. She reported working 26 hours on 13 of the 21 working days in a month.

Ernst also described a second example of a Peace Corps human resources officer who was caught falsifying time cards filed with various agencies, resulting in the employee double-billing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. She also gave several other examples in the letter.

“Until recently, growing bureaucracy in Washington was one of the few certainties in life, along with death and taxes,” Ernst said. “I am proud to have worked with the Trump administration and DOGE to successfully reduce bloated bureaucracy, but there is still much work to be done to make Washington more efficient.”

One can “look no further” than the “failed Schumer shutdown,” Ernst said, pointing out that taxpayers would have to pay more than $12 billion in back pay for 750,000 non-essential federal employees who didn’t work for a month and a half.

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In October, Ernst introduced the Non-Essential Workers Transparency Act, which aims to give the public an accurate view of how much back pay the government will have to pay in the event of a shutdown.

The bill requires executive agencies to submit to Congress, within 30 days of the expiration of the appropriation, detailed reports that must include the total number of employees and contractors employed by the agency at the time of closure, the total salaries paid by the agency during the preceding fiscal year, the number of employees furloughed during the period and their annual salary, the number of employees not furloughed and the amount of their salary.