Maybe it’s time to consider a constitutional fix for all this. Consider that the original 13 states had a total population under 3 million, with only VA and PA larger than 300K. We could devolve political power (i.e. budget and taxes back to localities of about this size) with the states and federal government appropriately downsized by giving the existing employees to the localities (similar to how large enterprise CEO’s in the 1970s told their headquarters staff that if they could find a job at the end-points of the business – out in the divisions, away from headquarters, they could stay working at the company, else they should leave because what they were doing at CorpHQ clearly wasn’t of use or value any longer given the rise of IT and the diminishing need for Carnegie and Sloan class command-and-control operations).

So, we disestablish most of the bureaucracy (including any and all federal obligation to their citizens), leaving at the Federal level perhaps only the departments of war, treasury and justice (the department of war can decide what state department employees and missions are worth keeping). (not original, borrowed from another comment read and misplaced a few days ago). Everything else is done closer to the citizen, and seldom in political blocks of more than 300K people (where everything means 9 of 10 dollars taxed and spent, ditto for regulation and law as affects resident citizens). Judges (if not a short and understandable software algorithm) supervise redrawing of political districts (the new states) after each census with some allowance for citizens at boundaries to choose their membership for one or two census periods. Then no interest group save the individual citizens could cover all these political entities. State capitals (and the federal capital) become largely museums. We offer statehood to other (foreign entities) on similar terms (which are mostly the civil society components of the constitution, rule-of-law by a court-system that’s (blind to status and) equal for all, quickly adjudicated contract disputes, common currency, bill of rights, and commitment to a common defense. Tax (and quality of life) competition is encouraged (transparent statistics, widely documented) between these political jurisdictions of 300K citizens that are nearly autonomous save for uniform trade and travel rules. Where the 300K citizen jurisdictions have very few rules going in, including the form of government they choose (save their citizens have freedom to travel so they are competing with all the other states forms of government, regulation and taxing). The one hard requirement is a tithe of 10% of a state’s tax receipts, 8% going to a larger community of jurisdictions (say a self-selected grouping of 100 300K “states”), and 2% to the Federal government for its essential functions.