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Dear Friend –
Should taxpayers be given a list of government employees explaining what they do and how much they get paid?
Let me know what you think:
Christmas Wish List for Taxpayers
Santa loves his lists.
He collects Christmas wish lists from children all over the world.
And, of course, Santa makes his own lists; one with everyone who’s been naughty and another of those who’ve been nice.
After checking them twice, all of these lists are turned over to the elves in Santa’s workshop at the North Pole to prepare for the big night.
 Santa checking his list. Taxpayers should be able to do the same with a listing of every government employee.
On Christmas Eve, children around the world can tune in live to the NORAD Santa Tracker and see exactly where Jolly Old Saint Nick is at any given time during his journey. This tradition began in 1955, when a newspaper printed a Continental Air Defense Command phone number, instead of the correct number for children to call Santa. The colonel who answered the call played along and soon NORAD was issuing alerts detailing the whereabouts of Santa’s sleigh.
So, while we all know where Santa’s elves work and where his team of flying reindeer may be at any given moment during their flight, we know very little— if anything— about millions of bureaucrats who are supposed to be working on our behalf.
 The government enables children around the world to monitor the progress and whereabouts of Santa and his team. Shouldn’t taxpayers be able to do the same with Uncle Sam’s workforce?
We know Santa has nine reindeer, but we don’t even know the exact number of people on the government’s payroll. There are roughly 2.1 million full-time civilian government employees, but there are more than two times that many government contractors.
Who are these folks? Where are they located? What do they do? And how much are they being paid?
The nonpartisan government transparency group Open the Books discovered that during the Biden years, the swamp became bigger, better paid, and more secretive, with key details about more than a million bureaucrats being redacted.
Like a game of reverse Secret Santa, taxpayers are gifting paychecks to bureaucrats who remain anonymous.
The names, titles, and salaries of the staff working for the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and White House are already publicly posted, so why is Washington withholding this same information about bureaucrats?
After all, there’s a lot that can be learned from having these lists.
For example, Open the Books found the pay for Biden’s bureaucrats was costing taxpayers almost $1 billion per day, with nearly 1,000 federal employees making more than the president!
I have a list of badly behaving bureaucrats … and it keeps growing. I’ve exposed bureaucrats taking a bubble bath, golfing, running a personal business, collecting multiple paychecks from different government agencies by double billing for the same work hours, and even being arrested driving drunk—all while on the clock.
Folks like these should all be removed from the government’s payroll so we can hire essential employees, like more air traffic controllers.
That’s exactly what President Trump’s new management agenda is setting out to do. The administration is already dramatically reducing the number of unneeded and underperforming bureaucrats and prohibiting the creation of new government jobs.
But to measure success, an actual list of who works for the government and what they are being paid to do is necessary, something the previous administration refused to produce.
Uncle Sam tracks where Santa is and the progress being made by his team, but doesn’t provide this same transparency for the government workforce.
That is why I am giving my December 2025 Squeal Award—and a lump of coal—to the Biden administration for withholding key information about public employees, including their job responsibilities and salaries, from the taxpayers.
The Where’s WALDO Act requires the location, salary, and job description of every bureaucrat to be disclosed to taxpayers.
Because Washington could learn a thing or two from Santa about keeping tabs on a workplace, I am also introducing the Where’s the Workforce At Listed by Duties and Office, or Where’s WALDO, Act to set up a public directory of federal government employees, listing both job descriptions and how much they are being paid.
Then, taxpayers will then have their own list to check, just like Santa.
Squeal Award: Biden Administation
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Thank you!
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