It goes without saying that bureaucracy is adored by Washington’s bureaucrats. Why wouldn’t it be, as it is the one thing that keeps them farther and farther away from the people and situations they are entrusted to help and find solutions for. When a problem becomes too overwhelming or starts bordering on actually having to find a solution, the bureaucrats merely impose another level of yes, you guessed it, bureaucracy. Take the Department of Education as an example. Established by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 as a reward to the teachers’ unions for their support, it has morphed into a two-building complex in Washington D.C., each with about 2,000 employees per building. What it has done to improve the quality of education for American children is anyone’s guess, but the bottom line is that the bureaucrats have another firmly entrenched bureaucracy in place to, well, do what bureaucrats do. Another aspect of bureaucracy loved by bureaucrats is that they seem to have natural immunity against something called accountability. When you’re literally buried under layers and layers of bureaucracy, I suppose it is easier to hide from tormentors who have the temerity to demand results, sort of like the guy who is able to stay one step ahead of the landlord’s rent collector.

One thing’s for sure. While Washington bureaucrats have long benefited from America’s overeating habits in the form of reckless spending, and the creation of more agencies and bureaucracies to support that spending, the day of reckoning is well-nigh upon the bureaucrat class for the profligacy and indifference in which they have so shamelessly conducted themselves and their bureaucracies. The unseemly corpulent Washington bureaucratic blob of corruption, inefficiency, indifference, and plain incompetence is about to be subjected to a Vic Tanny style bodybuilding and weight loss regimen. It will not be pretty, as the oversized, underproductive executives’ managers, and employees of legions of useless and wasteful programs and agencies in the federal government are now forced to deal with the reality of having to “lose weight.” Keeping in trim after shedding those useless pounds will, as always, be a real challenge for the newly streamlined and energized federal workforce. With a significant number of federal workers forced to return to the office rather than work from the comfort of home, it will no doubt be a good way to keep co-workers honest and create positive peer pressure to short circuit the will to cheat and go back to old ways. Afterall, if they were never made to return to the office after COVID-19 subsided, how essential were they to begin with.? Having said that, Weight Watchers might become as popular a fad inside the Beltway as it is for the rest of America.