Keep Firing Federal Freeloaders

[rangerrebew]

Keep Firing Federal Freeloaders
I & I Editorial Board
February 18, 20263 comments

Federal employment is at its lowest since the mid-1960s. Has the country fallen apart without the Washington bureaucracy holding it all together? Hardly.

Donald Trump was elected to accomplish a number of objectives. One of them was to cut, and hard, the federal administrative state. The mission has not been accomplished, but after a year, the federal workforce has fallen from more than 3 million to about 2.7 million, roughly where it was six decades ago, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Like a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it’s a good start. But cutting the federal leviathan by roughly a 10th — the largest peacetime downsizing ever, says the Cato Institute — is not enough. Even with the reduction in workers, the effort did not produce less spending.

So two things need to happen: The effort to cut the federal employment needs to continue, and spending has to be slashed.

https://issuesinsights.com/2026/02/18/keep-firing-federal-freeloaders/

[rangerrebew]

Unfortunately, I think the 535 members of congress aren't a whole lot different than any prison of an equal number of inmates, except the congressional thieves get to go home at night.  I'm not in the least suggesting they are all corrupt but enough of them, on both sides of the aisle, fight meaningful change because it could negatively impact their little gold mines or land them in a real prison, The dirt on each of them must be vast enough the members can easily be extorted into insuring meaningful legislation can be shut down.  In an ideal congress they would get rid of more freeloaders, but congress is light years from being an ideal institution.