They didn't develop a new font, they improved an existing font that's packaged inside a larger design library used for building government websites. Creating a standard that states, cities, municipalities, townships, etc can utilize for digital services improves access for all.

$1M to the US Government is like dropping pennies, less than that actually. By the READMEs, this font is actually a modification to another font and more sleuthing revealed that the author actually worked on this in his spare time.

drop enough pennies here and there and it adds up

That's a comical amount of pennies

That's where most of their budget comes from I think.

Is this a problem?