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Last summer, John McCain was asked about his vote for the August 2011 Budget Control Act, a law which starting March 1st will slash defense spending by $500 billion over the next decade. "I plead guilty. It was a bad thing to do, OK?" But now in his latest effort to avoid just the first year of those Pentagon cuts, McCain wants to do something much, much worse. Along with his GOP colleagues Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Buck McKeon (R-CA), McCain instead wants to reduce the federal workforce by 10 percent. As it turns out, that move isn't just shortsighted, it's short on logic. Not only are the ranks of federal employees already 10 percent smaller than during the Reagan years, but as a percentage of the U.S. population is near the lowest level in 50 years.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Senator McCain proposed a simple formula. McCain, the Wall Street Journalreported, "suggested hiring fewer federal workers, replacing every three that retire with just one." Echoing Mitt Romney's attack on public employees, McCain McKeon, Graham and Ayotte put that planned attrition at the center of their proposal to keep the Pentagon's budget untouched:
The 2013 Down Payment to Protect National Security Act would cut the entire government workforce by 10 percent through attrition at an estimated savings of $85 billion over the next decade. It would replace the sequester for one year: The government will need to trim $85 billion in Defense and non-defense spending in fiscal 2013 if sequestration takes effect on March 1.It's no surprise that the Republican scheme drew howls from federal employee unions. But the American public shouldn't be very happy, either. After all, draconian cuts by state and local governments have already cost 600,000 jobs and overall added at least a full point to the national unemployment rate. And as Ezra Klein explained two years ago, as a percentage of the U.S. population, Uncle Sam's workforce is at the lowest level in generations.The bill would allow federal agencies to hire one person for every three employees who retire or leave their job. The hiring reduction likely would take place over the next four to five years, but the savings would be felt "over the 10-year budget window," according to a Capitol Hill aide.
