September 21, 2015 1:36PM # Federal Bureaucratic Failure By [Chris Edwards](https://www.cato.org/people/chris-edwards) --- SHARE The federal government spends almost $4 trillion a year. It has hundreds of agencies and runs more than 2,300 subsidy programs. It employs 2.1 million civilian workers, 1.4 million uniformed military personnel, and 560,000 postal workers. It is a huge organization. It also fails a lot and is increasingly distrusted. [One new Gallup poll](http://www.gallup.com/poll/185759/widespread-government-corruption.aspx?g_source=World&g_medium=lead&g_campaign=tiles) finds that three-quarters of Americans think that government corruption is widespread, while [another shows](http://www.gallup.com/poll/185720/half-continue-say-gov-immediate-threat.aspx?g_source=Politics&g_medium=newsfeed&g_campaign=tiles) that half of Americans believe that the federal government is a threat to our freedom. A new essay, “[Bureaucratic Failure in the Federal Government](http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/bureaucratic-failure),” at Down​siz​ing​Gov​ern​ment​.org examines structural features of the executive branch that cause federal failure and help to engender such a dim view from the public. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).