What’s Happening?
Monday morning, US federal employees were greeted with an email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) requesting five brief bullet points summarizing their work from the previous week. While Elon Musk spearheaded the request, it has the full backing of President Trump (Breitbart). The response? Absolute hysteria.
Government workers and political commentators alike erupted into a collective meltdown, treating this routine request for accountability as an existential threat. Social media is flooded with federal employees, pundits, and politicians (especially Democrats) decrying a five-minute taskโsomething every private-sector worker has done at some pointโas if it were cruel and unusual punishment.
The (Over)Reaction
This reaction reveals a troubling disconnect between federal employees and the expectations of the workforce at large. I sympathize with people fearing the loss of their jobsโIโve been there. But nearly every conversation Iโve had with federal employees on this issue reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of their role.
They act as though they are private-sector employees, entitled to work without scrutinyโas if their positions exist for their own benefit rather than serving the public. But hereโs the reality: They are not private employees. They are public servants. And their paychecks come from the taxpayers, who have every right and duty to scrutinize their workโeven beyond what government bureaucracy deems โappropriate.โ That includes questioning whether some of these positions should exist at all.
Rule of Law
If a federal law, department, or job exists outside the authority of the Constitution, it is unlawful. By that standard, the vast majority of the federal government shouldnโt exist.
Instead of defending the value and constitutional necessity of their work, many government employees have chosen to gaslight the public by claiming the public lacks the sophisticated knowledge of various departments, or they are clueless to the cost, or they don’t understand the extreme logistical challenges ofโwellโsending a short email. Somehow, basic accountability is burdensome, unreasonable, and costly. As one friend put itโand I agree wholeheartedly:
If federal employees find basic accountability too arduous, then the federal workforce needs to be downsized until it can meet the same standard as every other industry.
Ghost Payroll
The concern is that government bureaucracy has been used to to launder money. The Department of Defense alone is unable to account for approximately $2,400,000,000,000 (2.4 trillion) in assets. Annually, hundreds of billions of dollars are unaccounted for across the federal government. The expressed purpose of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is to audit the federal government and find out where all of this money is going.
The federal government currently employs around 3 million people, the single largest employer in the United States. Unlike private companies, which must deal with realityโoperating costs, shareholders, and market demandโthe state is insulated from these consequences. This means payroll fraud, which would eventually cripple a private company, can thrive in governmentโbecause when the money runs dry, they simply print more.
This article by Intuit, a major provider of payroll services, is an informative look into the various types of payroll fraud most commonly encountered. The one most pertinent to our discussion is “Ghost Payroll”, which is described thus:
The term ghost payroll refers to situations in which companies are unwittingly paying nonexistent employees. This type of payroll fraud is most often committed by a human resources employee or someone with easy access to the company payroll system. The perpetrator can create a fake employee or keep a staff member on payroll who no longer works for the company. By falsifying employment records, they can collect the ghost employeeโs paycheck as if it were their own.
Washington, D.C., is entrenched with many lifelong bureaucrats who are the beneficiaries of other lifelong bureaucrats and political favors. That is to say, there is a system entrenched against oversight, accountability, and transparency.
The concern of the Trump administration isn’t so much lazy employees, as it is this ghost payroll, and President Trump said as much:
โI thought it was great because we have people that donโt show up to work, and nobody even knows if they work for the government. So by asking the question, โTell us what you did this week?…If people donโt respond, itโs very possible that there is no such person or theyโre not working.โ (Breitbart)
The reality is that fraudulent paychecks are being issued for “federal employees” who donโt actually exist or work. Unlike private businesses, which would collapse under the weight of such abuse, the federal government is structured to sustain and even normalize this exploitation. And who ultimately pays for it? You and Iโnot just through direct taxes, but also through the hidden tax of inflation, as the government prints more money to fund its unchecked spending.
Pork Jobs
My therapist once had a federal job where he and two coworkers spent their days playing chess in a remote building on the Great Plains. They were supposedly conducting a study on corn, but for months, they did absolutely nothing. One day, he suggested they actually do some work. His coworkers agreed, so they hopped in a truck and drove about 20 minutes to a field. They got out, glanced at the corn, then turned to him and said, “Looks like it’s growing.” With that, they got back in the truck and returned to the office. True story.
Several of my friends who have served in the military have shared firsthand accounts of rampant wasteโunits rushing to spend their entire budget on unnecessary purchases just to ensure they receive the same funding the following year. Whether itโs stockpiling equipment they donโt need, conducting exercises purely to burn through fuel, or ordering excess supplies to inflate expenditure reports, the goal is often not efficiency, but maintaining and expanding their piece of the budget. This is not an anomaly; it is standard operating procedure in federal bureaucracy.
Weโre only a month into the Department of Government Efficiencyโs (DOGE) audit, and the findings are absurdโbut not surprising to those whoโve followed government waste. Among some of the most egregious spending was U.S. taxpayer funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology for the study of infectious diseases and gain-of-function research by the Chinese Communist Party. To make this clearer: Your tax dollars helped fund the COVID-19 pandemic.
Figuring out who is getting paid what in our federal government is quite literally a matter of international security.
Accountability Is Normal in Every Job
Accountability is a standard expectation in the private sector and, to be fair, in parts of the federal government as well. Practically every job Iโve ever had required some type of reporting.
- As a store manager, I sent reportsย every hour, sometimesย every half hour.
- At near-minimum wage, I couldnโt even end my shift without submitting an end-of-day report.
- As a college shuttle bus driver, I had toย walk back to the officeย with paperwork at the end of every shift.
- As a mortgage underwriter, my entire job revolved around reporting.
And yet Iโm supposed to believe federal employees are somehow exempt? That a five-minute summary of work is an undue burden? If you donโt have email, write it on paper and hand it to your supervisorโproblem solved.
Even the Bible Teaches Accountability
The idea that a worker should report their labor isnโt just a modern corporate expectationโitโs a biblical principle.
Jesus Himself used parables that revolved around workers giving an account of their labor.
- Inย Matthew 25:14-30ย (The Parable of the Talents), the master gives his servants resources and later demands an account of how they managed them. The ones whoย produced resultsย were rewarded, but the servant who didย nothingย was condemned.
- Inย Luke 16:1-13ย (The Parable of the Unjust Steward), a manager is caught wasting his masterโs resources and is forced to give an account.
- Inย Luke 19:11-27ย (The Parable of the Minas), the servants are again required toย show what theyโve done with what was entrusted to them.
These parables reflect a universal principleโif you are given responsibility, you are expected to report on how you handled it. The parable made sense to the people because the basic principle of accountability for a job was widely understood. Woe to any people who forget this! Accountability is a basic expectation for labor, stewardship, and leadership.
And yet, here we are in 2025, with government workers demanding exemption from the same accountability thatโs been an expectation for thousands of years.
The Bottom Line
This pushback isnโt about fairness or practicalityโitโs about protecting jobs, political ideology, and the bloated system that benefits them. For us who live in the private sector, these kind of reports are a weekly, daily, or even hourly reality. Neither is it a modern invention of late-stage capitalismโEven biblical workers lived with making accounts to their employers.
It seems many federal workers have forgotten that their real bosses arenโt their supervisorsโthey’re the American people. And the American people, through both our elected leaders and those whom our elected leaders appoint, deserve to know what five things they accomplished at work last week.
