Or maybe you are wildly off base about how many humans it takes to corral the federal government of the US? Maybe you are more filled with propaganda of government jobs?
Maybe the people like you making government jobs the butt of jokes have been part of the problem? Maybe we should respect civil service and have high expectations of it but also understand how important it is.
Being mildly in debt is no reason or excuse to destroy democracy.
$36T is mildly in debt? 50% of our tax revenue will be used to pay our interest on the debt in the next 5 years. It sounds like you have no understanding about how much debt we are in, especially considering that most of our debt has been bought by the Federal Reserve, which is essentially printing money.
Nothing about this destroys democracy. Managing our debt and spending allows us to enjoy more democracy not less.
The attrition rate of the federal government is 6-7% per year. This is about 150,000 new hires a year if you maintain the same size government. You can even see it from the DOGE website showing hundreds of thousands
So yes, the vast majority are new employees. The idea that the government hasn't grown doesn't mean that new employees haven't been hire.
I'm shocked at the number of people that are defending government hiring when government jobs have been the butt of jokes for decades. Government headcount needs to be cut drastically. It doesn't have to be demeaning the way it's currently being done, but the 8 month offer was pretty generous in my opinion.