What to do if you’re in government and your iron rice bowl is threatened?

 The proverbial iron rice bowl is, simply stated, someone’s way of making a living.  Hopefully, most iron bowls are honorable; but surely many iron bowls are rackets and grifts.

What to do if you have a government iron rice bowl?  You have the bowl because there is a problem that exists and you are said to be solving it.  So, what to do if a reformer enters government and questions how you are dealing with the problem and even questions if you’re solving the problem at all?  Your iron bowls being threatened, you can exacerbate the problem and then blame the reformers.  Or you can expose what hithereto had been a result of your workings that you had hidden, and blame it on the reformers.