Which means nothing policy-wise. We should only be hiring federal employees if they serve a necessary function, and those who serve an obsolete function should be reassigned or terminated.
Fine, but it’s not always that simple. Maybe there’s not 40 hours of work per week for federal employee X right now – maybe there’s only 20, and for the rest she’s surfing the internet. But she has skills that are pretty rare, and she’s a great worker – and analysts predict that she’ll have more than 40 hours of work to do next year. Cut her job, or not?
That’s not decided at the policymaking level though. Budgets are, and then the department heads decide how best to spend the money they have that isn’t specifically earmarked. During the Clinton years, that meant a lot of jobs cut, but the performance of the government did not suffer.
Maybe, but there’s a balance – cutting federal employees isn’t necessarily a net benefit. It’s arguable whether the government is too big, too small, or “just right” right now.
Oh, I agree completely. I don’t think there was any attempt to cut the federal workforce in the 90s. There was just a bipartisan decision to cut unnecessary spending and that led to workforce reduction.
Sure, remove unnecessary spending and you can cut unnecessary taxes! And a real good place to cut unnecessary spending and unnecessary taxes is unnecessary regulation. About that word “unnecessary”? I’m wondering if you and I and most everybody else have different notions about that word, in this context.
The job appears to fit my qualifications admirably, forty hours per year sounds just about right. I’m as lazy as a dead cat, but this will do nicely. GS-4 or 5, I’m flexible.
Of course we’ll differ. For example, the Ex-Im bank, which no longer exists.
It depends. If the private sector is humming along and can easily take up the slack, then gradually cutting Federal spending won’t hurt any more than any other sort of event that causes job turnover. But if the economy’s still slack and lots of people are unemployed or underemployed, then yes, cutting Federal spending will hurt. Fewer Federal paychecks => less consumer spending => less demand => fewer private-sector jobs => less consumer spending, etc.
This is what the GOP did starting in 2011, and that’s why the economy’s still sputtering.
This is probably the most amazing thing to me about the Trump phenomenon.
It seems like the left (and many “neutral” observers) are treating Trump like a far-right Tea Party type. But he’s clearly not, at least on policy. He has called for higher taxes on the rich. He’s not been calling on huge spending cuts. He is moderate on most social issues (even his pro-life credentials are pretty suspect). I highly doubt he would make any significant changes to the ACA, even if he could.
Basically he adopted the tone of the Tea Party without any of their policies other than immigration absolutism. And folks are loving him for it.
I just wonder if the conservative base will ever figure it out, of if there is any unorthodoxy that Trump could profess that would override his tonal match for the current GOP primary base.
I’m really starting to wonder if a Trump Administration might not be all that bad.
Somebody hold me. I’m scared.
I have no doubt that he’d be way less destructive than any other Republican candidate. For instance, he won’t gut Social Security or Medicare. But if any of the others win, Congress will pass a Paul Ryan budget that voucherizes Medicare, and the new GOP President will sign it. And they’d likely raise the eligibility age for Social Security, just for funsies.
But he’d still be way worse than Hillary or Bernie or Biden or O’Malley.
Short version: Any Dem > Trump > Any other Pubbie. With lots of room in between on the inequality signs.
Oh, bullshit. That was very much a part of the Gingrich ‘revolution’ of 1994-95.
I was really hoping for something more than tax cuts for the rich. Cutting regulation (for the rich), fine. But we’ve been down this tax cut road before and it was a mess.
A very astute observation. This absolutely cracks me up. The Teabaggers seem more like a personality cult than a serious movement. They were united before by their hatred of Obama and if he was for something, it was obviously the work of Satan. Now they eagerly lap up whatever drool is dripping from Trump’s mouth, and if it’s 180 degrees from what they used to believe in their opposition to Obama, it seems to matter not a whit.
I totally agree!
But the flip side is that we need to have enough staff to cover those functions that have been legislated.
One reason wage theft exists, for instance, is that the government doesn’t have the staff to check up on employers. (And low-wage employees are rarely in a position to stick up for themselves.) Or when a retention dam breaks, and Charleston, WV has no drinking water for three days, one of the reasons that happened was that the EPA doesn’t have enough inspectors. And so forth.
Just out of curiosity, do you think the evidence supports a claim that personality cultism and being united by hatred of a person is solely a Republican phenomenon this year?
Getting back to Jeb (remember Jeb? The thread’s about Jeb!), he’s at 9% in the latest CNN/ORC* poll, well behind Trump (32%) and Carson (19%). Which is pretty much in line with Jebbie’s support in other recent polls, so no surprise there.
And he’s the second choice of only another 10%.
The interesting part, at least from my perspective, was question 27b, where they ask Pubbies if they’d be "enthusiastic, satisfied but not enthusiastic, dissatisfied but not upset, or upset if certain candidates* were the Republican nominee.
As you might guess, Trump and Carson get the most enthusiasm, but the part that’s relevant to this thread is that Bush leads both the ‘upset’ and ‘dissatisfied’ categories, with 21% and 26%, respectively.
That’s 47% of Republicans that aren’t exactly keen on the prospect of Bush being their nominee. So much for inevitability.
Speaking of inevitability, they also ask Republicans who they think is most likely to win the nomination, regardless of who they support. (Question 31.) In late July, 39% thought Jeb would probably be the nominee, and only 18% said Trump. Now that’s basically flipped: 41% say Trump, and only 22% say Bush. Kiss inevitability goodbye. 
*When did orcs get into the polling business? I guess they’d been at loose ends ever since Gollum did his dive into Mt. Doom with the One Ring.
Yeah, pretty much. I wouldn’t say that Sanders is a personality cult, he’s just saying what a lot of Democrats have been afraid to say for years. He’s like a revival preacher and Hillary is the stern-faced undertaker. Yeah, we may need her services but we sure as hell aren’t looking forward to it.
Back to Jeb:
He still sits on a big pile of money. He still has some big endorsements. But he needs to rid himself of Trump. Maybe he says in private: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” He can still ride out the Trump wave. Trump is soaring, but no votes are being cast. So it’s like watching the other team’s sluggers hit the ball out of the park in batting practice. The game hasn’t started yet. If the government is shut down and once again the lunatic fringe is responsible, the establishment types will come out and vote for their man, Bush.
I think regardless, the establishment types and, more importantly, the money men, will ultimately rally around Bush, tell the electorate who to support, the lemmings will fall in line, and Bush will be the nominee.
Others could just as easily be the money candidate, though. The votes follow the money, but the money also follows the votes. It’s worth noting that Cruz and Rubio have also raised a lot of money (though not even half as much as Bush). Cruz is obviously not a serious candidate - if you were going to pick him, you might as well pick Trump - but Rubio is.