Reinvigorating government - Pres Clinton's bogus reduction of government

National Review, Oct 28, 1996 by Jim Carter

DURING the 1992 presidential race, Bill Clinton campaigned as a New Democrat prepared to reduce government and, indeed, to cut 100,000 ''unnecessary'' bureaucrats from the federal workforce. Today, he routinely boasts that by the end of this year the Federal Government will be the smallest it has been since John F. Kennedy was President. Is there any merit to this claim?

It is true that federal employment has fallen substantially during Clinton's tenure. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 2,922,000 federal employees when Bill Clinton took the presidential oath of office. BLS data show that 146,200 of those jobs have disappeared since January 1993, a reduction in the workforce of 5.0 per cent. In Washington, D.C. -- where reductions in the rate of growth are considered cuts -- any genuine cut is a substantial achievement.

However, no matter how you torture the data, there is no way to support Bill Clinton's claim that the workforce is lower than at any time in the last 33 years. Even after the cuts of the last four years, there are 433,200 more federal workers today than there were when JFK was President.

Furthermore, where did the workforce reduction of 146,200 come from? Where else? The military. As the first postwar President to inherit a Soviet-free world, Clinton accelerated (some would say recklessly) the defense downsizing begun during the Bush Administration. Since Bill Clinton assumed office, Department of Defense civilian employment has fallen by 145,400, or 16.2 per cent. DoD employment has fallen from 32.4 per cent of total federal employment in 1989 to 27.1 per cent today. The cuts in defense employment have been so deep, in fact, that Postal Service employment now exceeds civilian DoD employment for the first time since before World War II.

Curiously, Clinton's paring knife grew dull before he could trim non-defense employment. Since January 1993, non-defense federal employment has fallen a mere 800 positions. If it had not been for a 14.1 per cent reduction in the number of people employed by the Legislative Branch, non-defense federal employment would have actually risen by nearly 5,000 under Clinton. If Executive Branch employment had fallen as steeply as congressional employment, Bill Clinton would be able to brag that he reduced Executive employment by 402,696.

To create the illusion that federal employment has been falling more rapidly than it has, the Clinton Administration conveniently omits the largest government employer of all, the 850,100-worker United States Postal Service. Yet even Clinton's own officials at the BLS and the Office of Personnel Management include postal employees in their tallies of Executive Branch employment. By excluding the phenomenal growth in the Postal Service since 1993, the Administration is able to pretend that federal employment has fallen by 200,000 positions.

Furthermore, the Administration has exploited the difference between full- and part-time workers. According to the Wall Street Journal, ''federal personnel reductions aren't as impressive as they first appear. Of the . . . civilians lopped from the federal payroll since January 1993, 17 per cent were part-timers and 13 per cent were temporary employees. At the Environmental Protection Agency, 89 per cent of those let go were temps.''

The official employment statistics also ignore the rapid growth of contracted labor. As the New York Times pointed out last March, of those federal ''jobs that have vanished on paper, many of the responsibilities are being fulfilled by outside contractors.'' Unfortunately, we don't know exactly how many private-sector employees are working under government contract. According to John Koskinen, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, ''You can use any number you want, but whatever it is it is a lot of people.'' The only data that can be derived from federal agencies show that more than 22 million people work for companies doing business with the Federal Government. Even congressional Democrats have faulted the Clinton Administration for fudging the numbers in this way. Says Arkansas Sen. David Pryor, a Democrat and longtime associate of Bill Clinton: ''The whole philosophy of beating our chest and saying how many fewer employees we have but never in the same breath saying, ''Look at how much larger we are getting in the use of private contractors,' is not an honest portrayal of what's going on with tax dollars.''

The fact is that many of the reductions in the federal workforce have actually ended up costing tax dollars. To reduce federal employment in certain agencies the Clinton Administration has relied on hugely expensive worker buyout provisions. To help eliminate 272,900 federal jobs through Fiscal 1999 the Administration has offered employees up to $25,000 if they agree to resign or retire. According to the OPM, more than 110,000 federal employees have accepted these costly golden handshakes. Not surprisingly, routine attrition in the federal workforce fell abruptly once word circulated that Congress might authorize buyouts. According to the House Subcommittee on Civil Service, nearly 54 per cent of the buyouts ultimately went to federal employees who were already eligible to retire. Of the nearly $2.8 billion paid thus far in buyouts, roughly $1.4 billion went to people who were already near retirement.