A Misguided Plan To Cut The Federal Workforce By 10%

Three Congressmen, Reps. Darrell Issa of California, Dennis Ross of Florida and Jason Chaffetz of Utah are proposing to cut the federal workforce by 10% before 2015. There plan is simple . The Office of Management and Budget will monitor the progress of the plan. There are exceptions for cuts. One is if there is a war. Another is  if “the existence of an extraordinary emergency threatening life, health, public safety, property, or the environment so requires.”

The most extraordinary thing about the proposal is that it does not stipulate the size of the federal workforce now. Either the Congressmen did not bother to determine that number, or they simply cannot count.

This bill, like others to cut the federal deficit, may be taking exactly the right approach. It is hard to prove it. The sponsors of the plan do not bother to forecast what the economic fallout might be if so many people lose their jobs, particularly in an economic environment where the national employment base may be shrinking. All of these federal workers would receive some assistance once they lose their jobs. The Congressmen have not mentioned that in their proposal either, which means they have not forecast the costs of unemployment benefits.

The rate at which states and local governments have laid off workers is cause for alarm. Some cities no longer have effective police or fire departments.  Troubled states like New York have not even begun their deepest budget reductions which will number in the hundreds of thousands.

The three Congressman could have used Google to find out that the federal government employs about 2.15 million people. This is the largest it has ever been. The arguments that this workforce is too large may be right, but no one in Congress is willing to stipulate exactly which agencies should lay off workers or be shut altogether. That is because no one in Congress has bothered to do enough work to provide even broad but fairly detailed suggestions.

The economy may be able to absorb the loss of another 200,000 jobs, particularly if that number is spread over four years. The three Congressmen have set aside the inconvenient truth that the US is only adding about 200,000 new workers a month based on the trend since the start of the year. A number of experts, particularly Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, do not expect unemployment figures to drop much in the next two years. May jobless numbers give that forecast early support.

The number of suggestions for budget cuts that have come out of Congress must number in the dozens. Very few of these look at how, specifically, they should be carried out or what effects they may have on the broad economy. That makes them worthless.

Douglas A. McIntyre