Long before Congress gave the U.S. government $1 trillion to shore up the nation’s infrastructure, the federal bureaucracy had its challenges doling out much smaller amounts of money.
Officials didn’t always track how they spent the cash Congress already gave them—in one case environmental regulators wrote $71 million worth of incorrect checks. Local leaders struggled to get new pandemic programs up and running, even if the federal government provided billions to support them. Thousands of federal workers neared retirement, positioning the workforce for gaping holes in knowledge just as it is expected to manage billions of dollars.