Alot of that has to do with dumb planning. My ex MIL, worked at West Point. Her job was to take care of the Post Officer housing. When 9/11 happened and all the academics put in for deployment to get their combat tickets punched, she had way less Post Housing to fill. When they came back, the DOD wouldn’t give her the extra money they needed. So she swore she’d just spend as much as she did in previous years, so they wouldn’t screw her over.
Yep. That is a big issue...0 based budgeting. There is no reward for “saving”.
But that is why I said agencies/military units that get a lot of funding can waste the most. Units will small funding kind of have to always play catch up so they can’t waste so much.
One thing that *could* help is to do a 2 year budget instead of 1 year. That would cut wasteful end of year spending in half since it would only happen every two years.