This level, in the past two decades, has morphed into the Deep State, faceless socialist bureaucrats enacting rules and regulations upon the authority Congress gave them that stifle industry, hinder innovation, and generally become a nuisance to ordinary citizens. All this is costly. Within the deep state lies the generator of government spending, the real money state operating for, of, and by the Military-Industrial Complex. This machine serves as a gateway drug to pass spending bills in the name of National Security. To get this money, the Deep State connives with politicians to create enemies, and everybody profits.
Lurking deep within the bureaucracy is the most powerful of the deep state entities, the Intelligence Community whose ability to affect decisions, policies, or people is so great, so massive, and so intrusive that they effectively operate as the 'spark plug' that gets things done, or not! The president can change the top leadership of these agencies, and that includes the DOJ, CIA, DIA, and DOD, and appoint his or her creatures to silently go around the Constitution to affect measures that the Deep State wants, the Constitution be damned. They're gone if the bureaucracy's leadership is not with the game.
All live in fear for their jobs, and even some, like the slavish Clinton followers, have lived in fear for their lives. The Clintons set the standard for totalitarian fear of disloyalty, and already, our country displays all the symptoms of becoming that very totalitarian state.
The Progressive Deep State now leans heavily toward the far-left radicals appeasing the Islamic Jihadists, whose singular intent is to destroy the Great Satan, and the Chinese, whose singular intent is to control the world. Somewhere in that formula is a New World Order.
Whose will it be? That's why the State of our Union sucks. "Anybody of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody"…Thomas Payne.