So, to begin, today’s government reformers must understand what the federal government is today. The first issue concerns the actual federal workforce. In 2014, John DiIulio Jr. wrote a brief but provocative book titled “Bring Back the Bureaucrats.” Since 1960, annual federal spending (in trillions) has increased exponentially, but the number of federal civilian workers has remained largely unchanged. In fact, as recently as the 1996 presidential campaign, President Bill Clinton bragged that, in his first term, he had created the “smallest government since John F. Kennedy was president.”6 As DiIulio points out, to understand the size of the federal government, one needs to put it in perspective. Over time, the federal workforce (full and part time) has shrunk as a percentage of the total U.S. population, from 1.1% in FY 1967 to 0.6% in 2018. In absolute terms, the federal workforce is slightly smaller than it was 50 years ago, even though the U.S. population has increased by two-thirds during that time period.7 Not only are the number of federal employees small compared to the population, but they also don’t cost very much. Compensation for federal employees cost $291 billion in 2019, or 6.6% of that year’s total spending.8
When it comes to the cost of wages and salaries, John D. Donahue found that “the private and public sector workforces now diverge sharply at the top and bottom of the earnings ladder.”9 Some of this divergence has, for instance, been the result of huge earnings at the top of the private sector. For example, consider this: Is there any private-sector CEO in the world who runs a company distributing $1.5 trillion annually in benefits to 66 million people, manages a workforce of about 61,000 employees, and oversees 1,500 offices globally, while earning less than $200,000 a year? The answer is no, but that’s the salary of the head of the Social Security Administration.