It's tempting to blame it all on politicians, as the author of that little ditty no doubt wants you to (the little dig about pressing "1" for English gives it away) and to be sure, government (AND government waste and inefficiency) do shoulder a very big share of the blame. But as always, there is more to it than that.

The major reason is that our society is both bigger and more complicated than it used to be. More complex systems must devote a greater proportion of their resources to overhead (administrative or manangement costs). Good engineering and technology and sound management can reduce this penalty, but they cannot eliminate it. It's the unavoidable friction in the system. There is no way around it, the bigger our economy/society/civilization gets, the more resources are devoted to taking care of business, and less to actually making stuff. This overhead increases in both absolute and relative terms. More complex systems may be more productive, they may even be more efficient, but they also require more maintenance.

Rancher Roy used to pay his cowhands a silver dollar every payday, out of his own pocket. Now he has to pay a bookeeper and an accountant and a gang of clerks to do the same thing because he has a lot more cowhands running a lot more cattle. All those guys in the office never get on a horse, but they still draw a salary. And Roy had to borrow money from Banker Bob to build his office, and put in computers, and pave the parking lot, and...