No, the 'government' is not in there somewhere (or so it appears, except for ATC), it is mostly a problem of airline scheduling practices, and especially many reservations systems.
Priority on those is listed by departure and arrival times (even if they are almost never met) so the idea for many airlines is to be as 'optimistic' as possible...which of course, never pans out with any regularity.
As far as regional jets go...yep, there are quite a few, simply because larger airlines have cut back flights to smaller destinations, and pushed them on to their regional partners.
And, the traveling public, not to mention the officials in those smaller towns demand frequency, not necessarily larger aircraft.
And, to top it all off, air traffic controllers are retiring in record numbers, and ATC salaries, altho not all that bad, are slow to raise.
The ATC union is making noises again, and aren't especially pleased.
One must realise however, that the US ATC system moves far more air traffic than
any other country (by a rather large margin), and not just airlines either,
lots of general aviation traffic (many on IFR flight plans...think charter/corporate jets, just for starters) and I haven't even mentioned military flights...and there are a lot of those.
In fact, I am surprised it operates as well as it does, especially as most of those 'ole Westinghouse ATC radars are getting long in the tooth...very long in some cases.
And yet, I can file IFR with my private aeroplane, and in thirty minutes (or less) of filing, can be airbourne, with the route and altitude I have requested (usually GPS direct)...generally without any delay whatsoever. And, no fees either.
JFK, ORD, ATL and sometimes LAX, yes they have delays at times, but generally
nothing like the two+ hour ATC delays I have experienced at MAN, during a busy summer season, flying to the Med.