Shutdown Highlights Basic Fact: Most of Government is ‘Non-Essential’
7th October 2013
After learning that 95 percent of Department of Education employees were deemed “non-essential” during the government shutdown and furloughed, I’m still wondering: Is that all?
Since its creation as a cabinet-level agency in 1979 and spending billions of dollars every year since, test scores for high-school seniors have either declined slightly or remained flat at best, suggesting perhaps still more fat to trim. I’m confident that we could get the same results with fewer people. It’s called productivity, people!
Essential:
- State. We have to talk to foreigners.
- Defense. Sometimes foreigners want to shoot us.
- Justice. Bad people do bad things.
- Treasury. We have money that need to be managed.
- Interior. We have non-money stuff that needs to be managed.
Non-essential: Everything else, most of which is none of the damned government’s business.