Reimagining Government Administration
Picture a family with a dozen children. The parents, seeking fairness, decide to charge for any help given among siblings. Need help tying shoelaces? That’s $2.50. Struggling with algebra? That’ll cost you $5.75. Folding laundry that isn’t yours? That’s $3.25 each time.
Before long, this leads to mountains of bills and spreadsheets, turning the household into a battleground over petty debts. They bring in accountants, auditors, and even debt collectors. Instead of helping one another, the kids are caught up in a world of transactions.
This scenario mirrors the workings of the federal government.
What we call a “redemption contract” happens when one government institution supports another. Every resource shared comes with a fee. Take, for example, the Department of Agriculture borrowing statisticians from the Department of Commerce; it results in interagency agreements, fund transfers, invoice tracking, and planned audits. It’s all just a way to shuffle taxpayer money around.
The General Services Administration was supposed to bring order to this chaos. Instead of creating a streamlined process for managing office spaces, supplies, and vehicles, it has become a sort of overburdened accountant. They track who owes rent on properties already owned, charge for unused desks, and send monthly bills. Agents even end up charging each other fees to process these payments.
Estimates suggest that thousands of employees are devoted to managing these transactions, which get lost in the Treasury Department’s records. They’re trapped in a system that favors accuracy over meaningful results. The end product? A convoluted system of multi-billion dollar claims with little public benefit.
Abolishing the General Services Administration wouldn’t mean closing buildings or taking cars off the road. It would simply remove the justifications for agencies to charge taxpayers for properties they’ve already acquired. Imagine issuing a single executive order to share resources without internal billing.
The Government Publishing Office, established in 1861, feels like a relic of the past. It still prints documents that most people never see, from budget justifications to environmental impact statements. These printed reports are stacked up in warehouses, even though digital versions exist online.
A single contract with the publishing office can amount to millions for documents likely seen by only a handful of people. It’s ironic that the agency meant to promote transparency is, in many ways, one of the least transparent regarding its costs and relevance.
Abolishing the Government Publishing Office wouldn’t limit access to information; it would improve it. Every printed document is digitally verified and made accessible, searchable, and cheap—all without the need for physical ink and outdated equipment.
The General Services Administration spends around $34 billion each year primarily on managing office spaces and billing other agencies.
Adding the Government Publishing Office’s budget—which exceeds $135 million—shows that agencies’ time spent on tracking, reconciling, and auditing these internal transactions could add up to about $40 billion in unnecessary annual administrative costs.
These two institutions exemplify the challenges of bureaucracy. It accumulates layers like sedimentary rock. Each layer may have had its use at one time, but together, they create a dense landscape of rules and processes that even the most dedicated employees struggle to navigate.
Shutting them down won’t drastically reduce government size, but it could free up many civil servants to return to genuine public service instead of managing internal processes or creating reports that hardly anyone reads.
The issue isn’t with the civil servants themselves; it’s the ritual we’ve constructed around them. Families can still support each other—just, maybe, without the invoices.
