Amen, I have a lot of respect for the amount of work federal agencies do despite constantly being stymied by political leadership.

Imo and ime, much of the bloat that exists in the federal service is becuase of legislative and executive pork barrel politics that drastically expands mission scope with no equivalent increase in resources, forcing these agencies to have to resort to semi-privatized solutions.

There can and is a healthy way to manage public-private relations but the DOGE model is obviously wrong.