This brings us no pleasure at all:
I appeared on Larry Kudlow’s show last night and we had a bit of a tussle about how much deficit reduction could be achieved by cutting federal salaries. Larry argued that a 5-10% pay cut for federal civilian employees like that imposed by Ireland could have a major impact on the federal budget deficit.
...
The total annual cost of all federal civilian pay and benefits can be estimated at about $260 billion. A 5% across the board pay cut would save no more than $13 billion , and in fact much less: remember, federal pay is unusually benefits-heavy. To put it another way: even if we fired every single federal civil servant and shuttered the entire non-defense federal government, three-fourths of the budget deficit would still be with us.
- David Frum
Well done, Frum! Well done, intelligent conservatism! For he makes an excellent point. As nice as it would be to balance the budget on the backs of these greedy bastards, it's not going to work.
But what would? The Big Three: Medicare, Social Security, and Defense. As Paul Krugman so delightfully puts it, it's best to think of the federal government as a huge insurance company with an army.
