AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Congressional Republicans want to cut the number of federal workers and have legislation to do just that.
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MARSHA BLACKBURN: What this does is require these agencies in our discretionary spending to right-size themselves every year.
RASCOE: That's Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn on Fox News. On Wednesday, she and New York Representative Claudia Tenney introduced the bills, which would also freeze pay, relocate some agencies away from Washington, create a performance-based pay structure and cut back on telework.
Howard Gleckman researches tax and budgets as a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.
HOWARD GLECKMAN: Thank you, Ayesha. Good to be with you.
RASCOE: So let's start with the basics. How big is the federal workforce? And when we hear the term discretionary spending, what does that mean?
GLECKMAN: So there are about two million civilian federal workers, excluding the military and also excluding postal workers who sort of live in their own world. And discretionary spending is the spending that's not guaranteed every year, so Medicare and Social Security. That's called entitlement spending. About 75% of the federal budget is entitlement. It's those programs that the Congress doesn't have any say in changing spending amounts. The other kinds of programs that are appropriated is what you think of, is the TSA, and it's the IRS, and it's the EPA, the National Parks, and all of those programs that Congress has to appropriate money for every year.
RASCOE: As we heard the senator in the clip, the agencies themselves would have to cut a percentage of workers every year, and the Department of Defense, Homeland Security and the VA are exempted. If all of the other federal agencies cut 1 or 2 or 5% every year, how big a dent would that make in federal spending?
GLECKMAN: So to give you an idea, the federal government spends about $270 billion a year on labor costs. That's for everybody. That's for all of the civilian workers. And it includes the veterans department and the others that they want to exempt. That's about 3% of the total federal budget. So if you wiped out every single federal worker - including those in Social Security, the VA, ain the programs that they don't want to include - you would reduce the federal budget by about 3%. Hardly even notice - loose change in the sofa cushions.
RASCOE: Well, in your view, are there substantive reforms that you think would improve the federal workforce without causing a major disruption to the services that people depend on and expect?
GLECKMAN: Of course. There are federal regulations that are obsolete, that are not up to date with new technology or the way the economy works or the way people live their lives. There certainly are people who work in the federal government who probably don't do very much, but, you know, it wouldn't hurt the government one bit if we downsized a little bit. But you have to do it in a careful way. You can't just say, we're going to cut all the agencies by 5% or 2% or whatever number you pick because you're going to end up hurting services that the government provides.
RASCOE: Well, government bureaucrats, as a population, you know, have been a favorite punching bag for a while. But how far back does criticism of the size and authority of the federal workforce go?
GLECKMAN: I suspect it probably goes back to George Washington. But government has been doing external commissions to try to find ways to make the government run more efficiently since 1905. Over 140 different commissions have been authorized over those years, and most of them don't accomplish much of anything at all. They write a report, and the report goes to Congress, and Congress ignores it. Maybe it'll be different this time. We'll see.
RASCOE: That's Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
GLECKMAN: Good to talk to you, Ayesha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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