system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The X-Files] Prior to Scully joining, was Mulder on his own handling cases? If so, did the department raise its budget in order to accommodate another agent working with Mulder?
gpt
Mulder was just a normal FBI agent who was big into conspiracy stuff and got on people's nerves.  He investigated regular crimes, but would come up with weird theories sometimes.  People seemed to like him okay enough, but you probably didn't want to get paired up with him as a partner long term.

A modern day equivalent would be somebody who listens to Alex Jones a lot.  He might be competent at his job, but he's just gotta tell you about how the Bilderberg group is behind Covid-19 or something.  A lot of agents probably request a transfer if they get stuck working with Mulder too long.

Once Scully becomes his partner, the FBI leadership is happy.  She doesn't seem to mind his weirdness.  Mulder is an active field agent, and he investigates crimes like any other.  His budget comes from the same budget as everybody else.  Mulder just likes to take the cases that are kind of odd, the ones other FBI agents want to avoid.  Scully functions as the straight man, and she can write up a report that satisfies the higher ups (in other words, a report that doesn't involve vampires or aliens).

What separates X-Files world from ours is that they have *enough* weird cases to justify having a couple of agents who only handle them.  Though you could argue that a lot of agents kind of dump weird cases on Mulder because they know they can.  A weird little town where everybody talks about seeing Bigfoot?  You don't want to waste the next month of your life in BFE, Oregon.  Let Mulder go do it.