If the customer drops the firm, you just get fired instead of benched.
That is exactly how hundreds of "Beltway Bandit" firms operate. Charge the government double what it costs you to employ someone, and spend most of your workday recruiting on behalf of your customers.
They wouldn't be charging me, they're taking a 30% cut of the hourly rate and giving me the rest.
My point was that the recruitment agencies will benefit from the rise of salaries
I agree that it's annoying that a company would pay a recruitment agency 90/hour to have me, but would never pay me directly that much.
Recruiters get paid by the employer, and not off the candidate's pool. It's employer who bears the burden of paying the recruiter in our current setting. This is why your situation was deemed scam (a.k.a. unusually sub-par for the environment).