Comment by mattbrewsbytes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattbrewsbytes | Hacker News Reader

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The cost of employees in the Federal gov is less than 5% of the total Federal budget. There are already agencies with oversight of spending and Congress sets the budget usually in the fall timeframe but it varies per department/agency.

Firing/laying off non-political appointee federal employees, aka civil service employees, will do nearly nothing to save money. The Federal government isn't a software company where one of the most expensive things is the cost of people.

If the budget is about $6,000B per year, 5% of that is $300B and if the target is laying off 10%, you are talking $30B. It sounds like a lot of money to a person but that means your federal budget is now $5,970B.

Basic budgeting concepts - if you wanted to save a lot of money you wouldn't be looking at something which only accounts for 5% of your budget. It would be like if your personal debt keeps increasing each year and you have a $800/mo car payment, $4000/mo mortgage, etc. and think eliminating 1 coffee run per week will save you.

Have you seen doge.gov? It is not just about firing the do-nothing remote federal workers.

Have you seen doge.gov? It is not just about firing the do-nothing remote federal workers.

Have you bothered to look up the actual hard statistics that show that federal workers work more and harder than those in private sector companies?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/21/are-feder...

Warning: You will have to exit your echo chamber.

Tell me to exit my echo chamber as you post a liberal source for a liberal narrative, nice! Try finding factual statistics and report back, we will wait.

I ready both sides regularly, in order to keep an open mind. You should try it sometime.

The article contains links to the original research.

Are you lazy, or just afraid of facts?

I provided a reference refuting your assertion that federal workers are lazy. You don't appear to have anything to back up your position, or you world have replied with it. Instead you tried to steer the discussion in another direction. Lame.

Just using this framing for remote workers exposes a bias which makes the conversation pointless.

DOGE Obliterating consumer protection agencies that cost next to nothing shows more about the intentions than any PR.

That and cut to orgs like the IRS that exist to reduce the size of the deficit

This will have major impacts on the deficit. Reducing revenue does not help close the gap when they're not also significantly reducing spending. If we aren't going to raise taxes, then enforcement needs to be maintained. Tariffs do bring in revenue, but at a cost (with the selected tariffs) to industries which will reduce income for companies and individuals so net we're likely to see reduced total revenue, but a shift in where revenue comes from. The deficit will probably go up the next few years with the current scheme between reducing IRS enforcement, reducing economic activity, and insignificant spending cuts.

This leaves only a few "natural" cuts that will be very unpopular, but needed to come close to balancing the budget: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. DOD cuts will reduce military readiness at a time when we'll either need it (Taiwan) or be abandoning our military dominance. But even cutting DOD spending by 100% wouldn't clear the deficit itself so other things have to be cut.

This year's DOD spending is $318 billion so far, and the deficit is $839 billion. Cutting DOD spending by 100% would still have left a $500 billion deficit.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

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