Giuliani The Slasher Returns
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, November 29, 2007 | 10:17 AM
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, November 29, 2007 | 10:17 AM
Rudy Giuliani was at it again last night in the CNN-YouTube Republican debate. Asked what he would do to reduce the national debt, he once more took the opportunity to flog his pet proposal to slash federal spending and the federal workforce. Here's what he said:
I think you have to do across-the-board spending cuts like Ronald Reagan did -- 5, 10 percent per civilian agency. It should be done right now, actually. President Bush should do it to strengthen the dollar. We should commit not to rehire half of the civilian employees that will retire. That's 42 percent of the federal workforce that will retire in the next 10 years. Don't rehire half of them. Use technology -- one person doing the job of two or three. Every business has done it; the government has to do it.
Isn't it about time somebody started calling him on this stuff? Such as:
- Nobody knows how many federal employees actually will retire in the next 10 years. That 42 percent is merely a projection of people likely to retire based on estimates that have proven less than fully accurate in the past.
- Is Giuliani really in favor of a haphazard cut to federal operations based on who happens to retire? So if FEMA gets an unusually high number of retirements, he's fine with cutting our disaster response capability and potentially leaving excess capacity elsewhere?
- Government, just like the businesses Giuliani touts, already has replaced hundreds of thousands of workers with technology. Bill Clinton proudly claimed credit for slashing nearly 400,000 jobs during his administration, and agencies spent billions of dollars on technology (and contract workers) to continue to meet their missions. (By the way, does anybody think the federal government improved as a result?) Since George W. Bush took office, thousands of jobs have been added back, but mostly in the homeland security and defense areas. Does Mr. 9/11 really think that those are the jobs that we need to eliminate?
As I've said before, issues like these are simply too important to let candidates slide by with glib promises.
Comments
After all this cutting the federal workforce, we hire in the untrained but who have a "degree in something" at a GS-11 level when they have not completed any mandatory training and are useless for a couple of years while they are trained. Oh but guess what, they are looking to move up from the minute they set foot in the federal workplace! Many are promised promotions when they are hired. Yep, reducing the federal workforce and hiring degreed idiots is working really well! Best of all, they can be managers in 2 years or less!
rh | Tuesday, December 04, 2007 | 11:43 AMToo many federal agencies are already under funded and under employed, i.e. Social Security Administration and Veterans Administration. The disabled vets are waiting an exceptionally long time (sometimes years) to have their cases reviewed for disability benefits. As for Social Security, there are definitely not enough people to assist those who call in with questions and issues. Wait times run from 10 minutes to over an hour. Unacceptable for both cases. DOD keeps consolidating and cutting jobs. With so many jobs gone, even returning vets can't get one with any part of DOD. Where is the bulk of the federal money going for jobs? Contractors. Very, very few contractors have any loyalty to the agency; they just want the highest salary and benefit package they can get from their company who in turn passes on the bills to the agency. Not only is the actual contractor being paid, but so is the "support staff" at their headquarters - up to the company president. A contractor doing the same job as mine gets almost twice the pay and benefits. We have GS-12's earning less than a contractor working in the same section doing the same job. The GS-12 has worked for the federal government for over 20 years and worked their way up. The contractor starts at the higher salary. Federal employees are the backbone of the federal government. I say do away with A-76. If it is really necessary to have contractors (which in most cases I doubt), a new and more equitable plan needs to be devised and implemented.
Jo Ann | Tuesday, December 04, 2007 | 09:28 AMI understand the debate over what helps the economy more, but just how does decimating the federal workforce more than it is and consequently contracting for the work at a higher cost save money? Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that for all those Feds bought out or not replaced previously there is a giant "shadow workforce" of contractors paid for with federal funding.
Civilian Marine | Friday, November 30, 2007 | 11:02 AMRather than bashing the Federal Employees yet again why not figure out a way to reduce the tax gap? It is estimated at $350 billion, yep billion!
It's easy to point to entitlements and suggest changes and some may be necessary, but rather than beating on the "ususal suspects", how about the people that don't pay their taxes!
Tired of the Bashing | Friday, November 30, 2007 | 10:55 AMBalancing the federal budget: it's a shell game . . . always a shell game, then and particularly now.
dlm | Friday, November 30, 2007 | 10:32 AMWhat everyone seems to forget is that Ronald Reagan started all this back in the 80s by applying hiring freezes combined with early-out incentives that led to huge gaps in many core competencies across whole agencies. Because of the hiring freezes, contractors were hired to do the work (which didn't go away just because the employees did). Then came the A-76 and BRAC waves that forced more people out, the "re-invention of government", and finally the current system of attrition and neglect while talking a good game about needing the best and brightest to come to work for the Feds.
It has become not just fashionable to "cut the federal workforce", but almost mandatory.
Giuliani cut Homeland Security/FEMA funding? Not likely, since the one thing that he is running on is his 9/11 experience. If elected, Giuliani will go long on both FEMA and Homeland Security. That means big plus ups in funding for both.
Johnnie Nichols | Friday, November 30, 2007 | 09:56 AMI hope the candidates explore how they should shift resources into high-priority discretionary programs. There is room, even outside the farm subsidies. The FY 2007 Commerce Performance Accountability Report show's the international trade administration's export arm producing 12,000 exports, using 1,300 employees at a cost of $230 million. In the 2005 version, Commerce (accidentally?) released that each company they help produces about 3 exports. That's a $50,000 gift to each company, plenty of money to hire their own, full time trade manager. And at $180,000 per government employee, there are certainly better ways to spend the money (no child left behind? cops on the streets? cargo screening?).
Place the $ Where IT Matters | Friday, November 30, 2007 | 09:17 AMThe wags against Big Government are now a part of our culture. It is sad that the wags tend to be at Federal employees intstead of programs and dollars, but we all know that that is because its ok to cut Feds and not ok to cut entitlements. On the other hand, we too have a culture that seeks to avoid competition for commercial work performed by Feds, focuses on Federal performance vice Federal manangement, has a history of resisting change and technology and some pretty silly and public screw-ups. They are not just glib comments - there is substance to the concern and our continuing efforts to defend the undefensible is part of the problem.
Soon To Retire | Friday, November 30, 2007 | 08:55 AMRudy is trying to gain support by sounding tough on spending. Too bad he didn't follow his own advice when squiring his mistress in the Hamptons. His expenditures hidden away in obscure agencies show he's above all the rules. The ex-mayor has got too much dirty baggage to ever be elected POTUS.
GS-14 spouse | Friday, November 30, 2007 | 08:37 AMIn the sake of honesty, when you say Bill Clinton trimmed 400,000 federal jobs during his administration, you neglected to mention that most of those cuts came from the military & defense dep't. Same with Clinton's budget balancing moves. And we wonder why we're now running low on troops. Duh!
Dallas | Friday, November 30, 2007 | 08:04 AMSince 40 to 50 percent of what the government does is unnecessary or counterproductive (a charitable estimate informed by long service), Rudy may be on the right track.
Ben | Friday, November 30, 2007 | 08:03 AMUnfortunately, the "nearly 400,000" jobs the Clinton Administration eliminated were almost all military, not civilian. As I recall, the civilian worker population grew by some 15,000 jobs, while the military lost some 360,000 people. You might note that we are paying for that right now, with insufficient forces to do the job.
Semper Fi | Friday, November 30, 2007 | 07:33 AMThe real issue here isn't the substance of Giuliani's suggestions, which are glib and simplistic -- and which he's smart enough to know won't really solve the challenges facing the Federal government. Rather, it's why he and other Presidential candidates (McCain, Thompson, and even Clinton) feel free to take these kinds of cheap shots. Maybe you feel compelled to call him on it, Tom, but you're a voice in the wilderness.
The Federal government has a serious public image problem, which is rooted in real, deep-seated performance and accountability deficits. This gives Rudy and the others license to pontificate like this, without (much) fear of push back -- knowing their words play right into widely held stereotypes about the Federal workforce. Fair or not, the government has a lot of work to do before it can hope for much support in the face of such ad hominem attacks.
Meanwhile, Sarkosy pursues a similar approach in France, and gets strikes and protests in response... And yet opinion polls show the public is behind him. Maybe there's a kernel of truth in all the rhetoric, that perhaps we should step back and consider.
Skepticus Rudialus | Thursday, November 29, 2007 | 04:42 PMThe big "G" cheated on several wives and alienate his kids. What he says is worthless.
Wise Old Owl | Thursday, November 29, 2007 | 11:11 AMABOUT THIS BLOG
Government Executive Editor Tom Shoop takes a look at news and events affecting the federal bureaucracy, from the perspective of a longtime observer of government.
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