Might of the Living Feds
26th March 2025
In 1974, Congress created the Legal Services Corporation to connect lower-income Americans involved in civil disputes with free legal help. The law that established the agency stipulated that authorization for its funding would expire in 1980, when lawmakers were required to vote on whether to keep it alive.
They never did. Still, Congress has funded LSC every year since. In fiscal 2025, its 51st year, LSC’s 135 employees will spend 95% of its now $560 million annual budget paying legal groups to represent Americans in cases such as eviction, domestic violence, and disputes over government benefits, according to Ron Flagg, the agency’s president since 2020.
“LSC would welcome reauthorization,” Flagg said. “We haven’t hidden from it. Every budget cycle, we go through an exhaustive process before Congress appropriates funds — dozens of meetings with leaders of both parties. We demonstrate our return on investment, how we help 2 million Americans get life-saving legal help.”
The Legal Services Corp. now stands as America’s oldest “Zombie” program, but it’s far from unique. At a time when the Trump administration is moving aggressively to scale back government, including eliminating the entire Education Department, it’s sobering to note that 1,503 agencies or programs live on despite expired authorizations, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Another 155 will expire on Sept. 30. The Zombies, nearly half of which have been officially dead for more than a decade, persist in a budgetary netherworld. In a deep dive last year, CBO analysts were able to find dollar amounts for 491 of the programs, with total expenditures of $516 billion. They don’t know how much funding the other programs received.