That's true. And usually they're so old that even the lawyers, legislators and judges don't know they exist.
If the Federal government could do nothing else I wish they'd change the budgeting to be something that doesn't essentially mandate spending the whole rest of a discretionary budget on stupid and only possibly-useful kit at the end of an FY to keep that line of accounting from being slashed for the next FY.
I get that the budget is so large that ZBB is probably off the table, but there has to be something we can do to incentivize thriftiness where thriftiness is an option without penalizing that agency in the out years.
The other problem is departments which are net revenue generating (e.g. USPTO) who can't apply their revenues to operations. As a result, they end up underfunded and underresourced, causing both negative externalities (3 year wait for a patent, shitty patents) and a lack of net revenue to the government.
It sucks when a department has some negative externalities (LEAs seizing assets in drug cases...)
If the Federal government could do nothing else I wish they'd change the budgeting to be something that doesn't essentially mandate spending the whole rest of a discretionary budget on stupid and only possibly-useful kit at the end of an FY to keep that line of accounting from being slashed for the next FY.
I get that the budget is so large that ZBB is probably off the table, but there has to be something we can do to incentivize thriftiness where thriftiness is an option without penalizing that agency in the out years.