There's another issue that has to do with the asinine methods of federal budgetting and appropriations. Some smaller offices frequently find themselves at risk of having all of their funds cut across the board (capital as well as operational expenditures) unless they continue to put in budgets that equal or exceed their original budgets (e.g., when the office was first set up). In order to do that, many of these offices find themselves in the position of having to continually requisition new capital equipment just in order to make sure that their operating budgets aren't cut to the point where they cannot continue to function.
When I was in H.S., my mother had a friend who worked in just such a small federal office that was involved with photography. According to this friend of my mother's, every year the office would throw out several brand-new, very expensive SLRs and request replacements in the budget request for next year, just to make sure that the office got enough operating funds to keep its operations going.
That may not be what's going on in this circumstance, but I've no doubt that it goes on in a lot of federal offices, and that it constitutes a substantial aspect of the continued growth in federal spending.
