President Biden recently signed the Omnibus Appropriations Bill for 2023, a whopping $1.7 trillion. These appropriations authorize the hiring of an additional 50,000 federal employees. Almost every day we hear of corporate cutbacks or lay-offs in the private sector including CNN, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and The Walt Disney Company to name a few. Bank of America is looking at a hiring freeze and allowing for attrition to shrink its payroll. Many other companies are continually looking at ways to save money and perform efficiently. Maybe the federal government should follow suit.
Republican Representatives have expressed concern about a very large hiring effort by the IRS but very little is said about the rest of the expansive federal civilian workforce. Recent spending packages from the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure spending bill, and the so-called, Inflation Reduction Act all can add headcount.
We have a new Congress with the House majority going to the Republicans and potential Speaker, Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy has vowed to make spending accountability a priority. He specifically mentions the new appropriations and hiring authority for the IRS. Notwithstanding, why not review other federal agencies?
The Congressional Research Service tries hard to get an accurate count on employees and sets the numbers at 2.6 million civilian employees, plus another 60,000 in the legislative and judicial branches. This does not include the 600,000 postal employees because they are set up to self-finance. Keep in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of contractors working for federal agencies. Many of these are full time employees very similar in tenure and time of employment as federal employees.
According to the most recent data from the US Office of Personnel Management, the average federal employee salary is $110,000 annually. Benefits such as health insurance, retirement annuity and a thrift savings plan, which is equivalent to a 401(k) are standard. A relatively generous annual and sick leave package are also included.
Just like the private sector, much can be done with advancement in technology to hold down costs and indeed, many agencies are incorporating that technology to streamline mundane tasks. Representative McCarthy, should he become Speaker, must expand his review of not only the IRS but to all federal agencies. Not unlike the private sector, the result could be a more efficient and resilient federal workforce.
Steven W. Anderson is retired from the U.S. Department the Interior and is an AMAC Action Delegate in California’s 1st Congressional District.
Half the federal work force needs to be cut, period. This is just ridiculous that in this day and age of computers we need so many employees sucking the government teat. So, any program funding passed by Congress is always at least 80% overhead and not for the program intended. So freaking stupid.
Sounds familiar, but the government doesn’t need to out buying patronage jobs. Just like the public, if one is able to buy 50.1% of the vote by making groups dependent on a government check, he/she owns the election assuming they promise to add and not cut benefits. Just follow the bouncing buck. And, for what it’s worth I don’t see anyone in our government (virtually all levels) falling over from to much work now!
I wonder how many of the new hires are Diversify, Equity and Inclusion officers?
The average salary is skewed because so many employees in DC make more money.
What goes on across the whole country is any city , county, state, and federal worker gets paid way more than the person doing the same job working across the street in private businesses. If businesses pay what they can afford for the job at hand how can our governments pay way more for the same work? and we are footing the bill.
Never going to happen. This is Brandon’s way to make America a global communist country.
McCarthy will not be voted in as speaker. Too many RINOs, Republican Party is fractured.
Should be read with AMAC article.
forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2017/10/20/why-are-federal-bureaucrats-buying-guns-and-ammo-158-million-spent-by-non-military-agencies/?sh=7a5671da64a1
I worked for the Gov for 26 years. You would not believe how easy the job was. And people still slacked off during the day. Here is one example: One employee had to retire because of medical problems. He collected his full pension. His good friend was the manager of the facility, so the mgr hired back his friend at $50,000 a year (20 years ago) to be training specialist. But we had no trainees. So the guy collected his pension, got $50,000 on top of that and sat in the office all day reading the paper. That’s just ONE example.
Just this morning I was driving behind a USPS vehicle (that had no license plate, by the way) with a bumper sticker that said “We’re Hiring”, with the appropriate web address. How can a federal department, that for many years now has been losing billions, BE HIRING?! Easy…it’s not their money they’re blowing…IT’S OURS…and they couldn’t care less about We the People, We THE TAXPAYERS; and it shows by everything the do! Unvetted invaders are valued more highly than we are, and that is 100% unstainable. It’s inevitable that this going to end…ONE WAY, OR ANOTHER!
Can we automate more & reduce labor for Govt/
Inside DC Beltway alone
& nationwide
More can be done
My Father In Law as a lot of guys back then went to work for the Govt. in WW2 . Once he got out he stayed with the Govt. He was a acvcountent. Wound up with the P/Office. This he told me one day. After figgureing up his allowed off time,he acutaly worked 6 months of the year. Great for the common worker. Kyle L.
Another good example. AS friend of mine’s wife worked for the IRS. One lady in the room kept a t v under her desk so she could watch her soaps. Kyle L.
L wonder how many gov emp. per citizen ,how much the fed gov grew in proportion to population illegal aliens discounted
They need to offer bounties for ideas on what/who to get rid of. If A turns in slacker B, give A an extra $2000, After a while they’d weed out a lot of deadwood!
Well ,the government want more Sheep Herders to watch over their complimant little flock.
An oldie, bit still reflecting the truth: “The Army has a new missile system. It’s named the “Civil Servant” because it doesn’t work, and you can’t fire it!”
Well, I’m a retired Federal Employee, a Firefighter/EMT who served our US Army. I’m now a contract employee serving the US Army again in a different capacity.
I will say, the Federal Government is full of supervisors who won’t do their jobs, SUPERVISE! They also allow unions way too much say in how things are done. Not really sure why unions even exist in the federal government. They can’t negotiate salaries, the number of employees or what their jobs are. The government has adopted every safety measure that has ever been conceived. So why do they allow them so much power? The have become a shield for the deadwood.
Supervisors must do their jobs to earn the money they make. That Meehan’s discipline and firing of bad employees. There are so many union backed protections that the sentiment is generally it’s easier to keep hem and pay them rather than jump through the hoops to discipline or fire them.
Government employees make pretty damn good money for what they do. Some jobs need to be paid very well while some should be just above basic entry level jobs. The benefits are good but have weakened much over the years. Contractors make usually better money. I’m quite fascinated that the government still offers uncapped sick leave and the very generous vacation leave balances. The private industry gets two, maybe three up to four weeks per year with very little to no carry over amounts.
The government should rewrite and or eliminate many of its regulations. There are almost too many that they prevent you from doing a job effectively. Allow bosses to fire those who consistently fail, or screw up. And when a senior boss sees middle management is not doing their job they should be disciplined and/ or fired as well. They should also recalculate the numbers of people it takes to do certain jobs. Many times one or two do the work of four or five.
The IRS should be abolished. With all the proposed new hires it’s being weaponized against us tax paying conservative citizens. The IRS has way too much power and should be allowed to seize nothing from us. They should enforce all laws equally both corporate and personal.
The biggest joke is the USPS. Abolish it or at a minimum cut back it’s numbers and how it does business. Mail delivery should only occur on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Post offices can be open Mon-Fri. There don’t need to be full time mail carriers if the work 3 days a week. Who really uses the snail mail anymore? Most people do banking and email. The only thing that the USPS delivers is trash. This would cut down on paper waste as well.
In general the federal government needs to be overhauled by private industry and run like a business.
Well people, I can’t afford to survive on just my Social Security payment so at 75 years old I’m forced to continue working.
I really lucked out finding a great job where I made almost 70k this past year though I did have to work 6 days a week/ 8 hours a day. Now I just received a notice from Social Security that in 2023 I can make $21,240 without it affecting my SS payment. However, for every $2 I earn over that amount $1 will be deducted from my Social Security payment. So if I make $50k above that initial $21,240 I WILL NOT BE ENTITLED TO ANY OF MY EARNED SOCIAL SECURITY MONIES!!!
As Barry Goldwater once said:
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything you have!”
I EARNED my Social Security payment and NOW the government WILL STEAL IT!
And yet getting a fast response from any federal department with federal workers always has to take 30 days to get that response, because these employees are not given performance efficiencies demands. A good work efficiency rescanning of the redundancy of similar jobs would/should be done ASAP. This is exactly why the USPS workers are complaining about the “sudden change” to perform their jobs—delivering mail through the postal system in a timely manner. Most of these federal type jobs don’t evaluate their employees efficiency performance and once they gain a certain time on the job, they can’t be fired ( using the at will option) because their job can’t be eliminated. Yeah they could be transferred around but they can’t be fired. Government jobs doesn’t work for or with the end goal of achieving profit like corporations do, but just constantly spending money with no regards to productivity waste.
BIG GUVMINT GETTIN BIGGA
The federal and local governments will consume us if left unabated to spread like an infestation.
Theres a simple reason the demon party constantly expands the number of federal employees- the latter quickly succumb to left wing conditioning and become dem robots ravenously devouring the substance of this country and providing very little in return. ‘Work’ to govt employees can be figured thusly- roughly two hours per shift compared to the ever shrinking private sector. Then there’re the obscene pensions. Its a grift of titanic proportions.
As said before, if the federal government had to live on a budget like regular hard working Americans then they would have to make common sense decisions on spending. But they don’t and its just more and more unecessary spending of Billions of taxpayer dollars, a lot of which is money down the drain.
When Biden and the others in Washington have unlimited money this is what the do spend spend and more spending because it is not there money they are spending the could care less for the American people just putting us in more debt what a government we have.
As our government gets bigger, our taxpayers become more poor. They have great benefits, too.
Great pensions. Why don’t they have 401K plans like us?
Soon, we will all work for the fed. Do we really need a private sector ?
Some one told me that the fed operates by receiving tax payments from private
sector employees but I guess that’s not correct. Don’t know how I had that mixed up.
A free enterprise nation cannot be sustained when government employs an overabundance of citizens. We need citizens employed in the private sector where they only contribute to taxes rather than being a burden on tax dollars.
More FED employees ensures more LEFT votes.
When AOC was asked how will you pay for all this? her response we just print more money, leaving out this causes inflation, which in trurn will destroy our country, but then shes not the brighes but a perfect swamp member.
can’t people see this is vote gathering for the Democrat party…What is our congressmen doing to STOP the madness? Call your rep and ask im/her…
Absolutely criminal Banana Republic in DC. Way past time to rid these illegitimate, fraudulently elected individuals from our government. Starting from the top down!
Used to be that a government job was the least desirable job (50′ & 60’s). You know back when we didn’t lean so heavily Socialist. Now we are becoming Socialist by virtue of employment. The largest employer in the states is the government at 1,869,986 employees (and that’s just the Feds). I’m sure that they wouldn’t vote in favor of their own since sinecure, surely they wouldn’t. Government is a blight on our existence and as we pile jobs upon jobs into the government we will approach “Idiocracy”. Being stupid will become a desired even exalted trait.
Hope he’s selected for this position!
The biggest problem is they continue to add government agencies to run government in the background then they sit do nothing and get paid we now have over 400 government agencies this means unelected burocrats run the government not elected representatives this must stop
First off someone needs to put a stop to Brandon before he lives another day. Second, anyone in congress who voted for this should be put in trees as a warning to those who do not believe that this is a revolution. Third, why would someone who can’t even keep his own people in line be made speaker. This is war against the Satanist left. You don’t go to war without your weapon.
These elite socialist criminal marxists hate the private sector but love the Government. The power of the Government is their GOD! So, they will burden us taxpayers to pay for a way too big corrupt government, that’s more and more weaponized against us. Once all these federal workers are hired and unionized, it will be nearly impossible to fire them!
Biggest problem,, Government Hired Employees push Union’s and Vote Democrat
Joe Biden. President? Who knew “A Place for Mom” had the White House listed as an upscale care facilty for dementia patients?
And the rank and file law enforcement and educators that do matter are just getting the shaft while the do-nothing “administrations” grow. Good Americans are leaving these jobs. Gee Whiz, Joe is going to visit the border today. Wonder what happened to Kamala. They are all just too busy acting busy.
Just adding to the democratic/communist party!!! Sit around and do nothing and get paid for it!!!