Not exactly, the House still has control of the expenditures if they want to restrict the Executive branch. Of course that is highly unlikely with the Dems in such strong control of the house. (for now)
Fossil
In theory you are correct but as you point out so far neither Congress nor media is questioning this.
CATO Institute pointed out the value a the average Fed employee is 98k while the value of the avg private sector employee is 47K
Unless someone can get the populace demanding this stop we are in for harsher times than we can imagine