The Real Problem

Federal Budget

 From Why Firing 9% Of The Federal Workforce Didn't Move The Needle:

The total federal payroll— every salary, every benefit, for every civilian federal employee (excluding the military)— comes to about $336 billion a year— less than 5% of total federal spending.

In other words, you could fire every federal employee tomorrow— every bureaucrat, every regulator, every paper-pusher in Washington— and 95% of the spending would continue as if nothing happened.

That’s because around 60% of the budget is mandatory spending— Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid— programs that pay out automatically based on laws that were passed decades ago. Congress doesn’t vote on these expenditures each year. The checks just go out.