Most people recognize that government today is much larger and in many ways more intrusive than it was at the nation's founding. The First Congress, representing thirteen states, had sixty-five representatives and twenty-six senators. The bureaucracy consisted of three cabinet-level departments (War, Treasury, Foreign Affairs, to which one more, the Justice Department, was added) compared with fifteen departments, numerous bureaus and agencies, and more than 2.5 million federal employees in modern times (Office of Personal Management 2002). Despite widespread belief to the contrary, the federal government's size, measured by employees and not budgets, has been stable since the 1970s, and indeed it decreased during the 1990s. In fact, most of the recent growth in government employees has been in the states. Still, viewed in the broad sweep of history, it is important to understand why government has grown to its present size.