The new and generally higher fee schedule was needed, but the announced new schedule goes well beyond the fiscal needs of the agency, imposing higher or lower costs based on the administration's feelings toward the beneficiaries.
A possible legitimate reason for slow response to Freedom of Information Act requests is the growing number of such requests, with an increase of 32 percent from 2012 to 2020. A closer look at where FOIA requests are actually coming from reveals the public is not really getting the government transparency these numbers suggest. Who is really writing all of these FOIA requests? Many of them are aliens seeking their own immigration files.