@betarhoalphadelta Looking at this back-and-forth between you,
@847badgerfan , and
@FearlessF I had to laugh. I especially laughed because I assume that you, as a Libertarian, probably generally agree with them on cutting Federal Employees but you realize that it wouldn't materially impact the budget so your argument isn't "Oh my god we can't do that" but rather "Yeah, so what."
Working around local government has given me some insight into how legislators think and how legislatures operate.
The first thing to understand is that they think in terms of things they can understand. As it relates to money (I think I've used this example here before) that means something like this:
- I say $25k, they think cheap car
- I say $50k, they think nice car
- I say $75k, they think really nice car
- I say $100k, they think REALLY nice car or (in OH anyway), REALLY low-end home
In CA you can go higher because housing is so expensive but here in OH that really only works up to about $500k-$750k. At that point (in OH) you've probably reached the point of "the most expensive house anyone I know owns" and after that they (legislators) have nothing to grasp. Beyond that it just becomes "A LOT". Once you reach "A LOT", nobody really seems to notice how big that actual "lot" is. Ie, they'll argue like crazy over saving $5k on a $50k purchase but when you are asking for $5M, nobody asks any questions.
This is really stupid because saving 10% on a purchase of $50K is only $5k, big deal but saving 10% on a a $5M purchase is HALF-A-FREAKING-MILLION DOLLARS.
The next thing is that people on the accounting side of things have a saying that whenever cuts need to be made, Councils (municipal legislatures so like Congress but for your City instead of the US) almost always focus on "Paperclips and Overtime".
I've seen this literally dozens of times. Some budget needs cut and you and bet that some Council Member will say "You have $2,850 budgeted for office supplies, couldn't you get by on $2,500? The unfortunate accountant working for that body will be sitting in his/her chair thinking "Yeah, but we need to cut $500 K, WTF are we doing talking about $350?
In local government, payroll is usually the dominant expense. For schools it is often around 75% or more. For Cities it is usually somewhat lower but still frequently around half or more. Then, the "rest" is typically made up of things like Utilities, Insurance, Debt Service, and other things that really can't be cut.
The bottom line (for local Govn't) is that if you want to cut the budget in any appreciable way, you HAVE to reduce employee count.
In a Federal context what you pointed out is accurate and the employee compensation portion is barely more than a rounding error.
I always laugh when someone says we need to cut Congressional salaries. On the scale of the chart you provided, a dot representing Congressional salaries wouldn't be visible.
I frankly think that we should probably cut a LOT of defense spending but I also realize that this wouldn't even have a material impact on the overall budget. Per your chart Defense spending was just over 0.8 Trillion out of a budget of $6.1 Trillion. Ie, defense represents around 13% of total expenditures so even a drastic 25% cut in defense spending would only reduce the overall budget by around 3%.
Also note that per CBO, last year the US brought in $4.4 Trillion and spent $6.1 Trillion for a deficit of $1.7 Trillion. To balance the budget you would need to cut almost the entirety of both Nondefense AND Defense "discretionary" spending of $917 Billion and $805 Billion respectively. That adds up to $1.722 Trillion. That would only BARELY balance the budget.
