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Their funding is very directly tied to how big of a deal people consider the issues they’re tasked with to be. You ever see a government bureaucrat argue “the mission my agency handles is really easy and not very important, we could make do with a much smaller budget without any downside for the people”?

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No, but I also don’t think a government agency gets created in the first place for a small mission

Initially, sure. But the incentives of everyone involved are aligned to make the organization tend to grow in budget and scope bounded only by the public’s willingness to pay for it. The more they can convince the public to pay, the more money there is to go around. Fear happens to be a great motivation to this effect, and unscrupulous bureaucrats have been quick to find every opportunity to jump on that.

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