On the recordAugust 5, 2010
Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Reduce and Cap the Federal Workforce Act. This is a simple straightforward bill that would reduce the number of civilian federal employees--excluding those serving in the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security--to the pre-2009 numbers in each government agency through attrition. Once this reduced number is reached, then each agency would cap the number of employees at that level. Each hire would then have to be offset by another employee leaving that agency. It is not hard to locate illustrations where the Federal Government is growing at an exceptionally fast pace. Looking at the number of Government employees as a percentage of America's population, one easily sees how we have increased the size of the government. In 1815, the total population in America was 8.3 million people, yet there were only 4,837 Federal Government employees. That represents nearly \1/20\ of 1 percent of Americans who were Federal employees. From 1981 through 2008, the civilian work force remained at about 1.1 million to 1.2 million. The Obama administration says the Government will grow to 2.15 million employees this year serving roughly 310 million Americans. That is nearly 1 percent of the population, or put another way, is 20 times the number of government employees than there were in 1815 and almost a 50 percent increase since 2008. The actual numbers are likely to be much higher.…





