A friend of mine used to be a DC bureaucrat. He correctly pointed out that your prestige in Washington is a direct function of the number of people you manage. He tells of directing his workers to let work pile up before a GAO visit. When the GAO got there, he pointed out how over-worked his small staff was and that he needed at least six more people. He played this game for over 2 decades, got a larger and larger staff and more and more prestige in Washington.
What would happen if Bush came out and announced the following Executive Order: “As of today, each bureaucrat in the federal gov’t has 10% less money to run their departments than yesterday. If you can’t provide equal or better service within one year using that budget, I’ll replace you with someone who can.”
I’ll bet we’d never notice the difference.
Oh, I bet we would, if only because of the shenanigans you described in your post.