Elected respresentatives vote the programs in, then pass to unelected bureaucrats, the authorization to establish rules.
The jobs of the unelected, depends on plenty of customers.
For decades the rolls have grown with little inerest in cutting back, instead. The current cutbacks are the first in my memory, which spans Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and BushII.
This President is enacting some measures, that others only talked about.