I agree completely with your first paragraph.
I included CRs in this discussion because it’s another “process of convenience “ created because Congress won’t (claims can’t!) do its job. It needs to stop. If pain for all is necessary to whipsaw Congress to do its job then pain for all is necessary!
Increasing government efficiency will be painful for some.
However, if the government simply changed their budget mindset from “spend it or lose it” to “zero based, spend what you need to spend” they would save billions of dollars.
Money left over from projects or at the end of the fiscal year will be recaptured and applied to the general fund for the next period.
As someone who managed budgets nearing $100M in the private sector, I would have been fired if I dumped expense money at the end of the quarter because I was “under budget.” It was beaten into my head that it was “not my money.” (Conversely, I wasn’t fired if we had to spend over budget for good reasons.)
90% of money problems in government and business come from people having zero understanding of the budget process and reasonable budget management. Instead, we have morons and accountants running the world. And they will run it into the ground.