I do not know about the US, but have have worked for a state admin. To be honest, there is a lot of inefficiencies, but the large majority of those exist to _prevent_ fraud. I could once again describe why, but the details aren't really important: i swear all waste and inefficiencies i've seen not caused by out-of-date software are in place to avoid fraud from low to mid-level employees.

From that you have a choice: either you allow low level government employees to partake in the corruption and remove a lot of rules, or you leave those rules which makes running the admin cost more. I think the second solution is better even if it were to cost more (i'm not sure it does, corruption is expensive), because once government low level employees start to accept bribes, your country is fucked.

The idea is that if you repeat "fraud, waste or abuse" it wont matter whether it is teue or not.

And to be fair, the tactic of repeating lie worked of conservatives wery well in the long term.