Franklin was actually supporting the authority of government to act/govern in the interest of collective security. [1]
[1] https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
tl;dr; Franklin was defending government spending on defense
I'll update the tldr with two quotes
> It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.
> And maybe it doesn't matter so much what Franklin was actually trying to say because the quotation means so much to us in terms of the tension between government power and individual liberties. But I do think it is worth remembering what he was actually trying to say because the actual context is much more sensitive to the problems of real governance than the flip quotation's use is, often.
I think the second quote is important, because sayings change over time and the meaning they hold changes too. That is the progression of language.
But bureaucracy is just so evolves that it perpetuates the problem it was created to solve. Trivially, those agencies which reliably have achieved their goal get disbanded as no more needed, the only remaining in the long term are such whose goals are elusive.
This is how well-intentioned, honest people try to grab more power for their agency, because it seems to help achieve that elusive goal.
(To say nothing of people with less integrity in a position of power.)