“Mission creep” is generally understood to mean the gradual or incremental expansion of a project or mission beyond its original scope. In military parlance, it describes when an operation becomes wider in scope than its initial objectives, which can lead to unintended, and even disastrous, consequences. Mission creep is especially prevalent in government bureaucracies. How often do we see an agency gradually expand its defined mission statement to include new issue areas or programs? At the federal level, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the champion of mission creep. According to an EconoStats case study, the original...