800,000???

The Federal Government has 2 million employees. As a result of the shutdown, 800,000 of them will be furloughed, because they are deemed non-essential. This fact, ladies and gentlemen, is at the very heart of why I detest Washington, D.C.

Ok, before I go any further, let me say that if you are one of the 800,000, I am very sorry for your loss. This isn’t your fault. You have a job; you go to work and expect to get paid like everyone else. Try not to take this personally, but if you are not essential, why are you even employed in the first place?

Here’s the deal. Every large enterprise has non-essential personnel, this isn’t a government invention. I’m sure there’s somebody working at Apple who is paid 100 grand a year to grind the big boss’ Jamaican blue mountain coffee beans every morning. But when you’re a company like Apple which earned 8 BILLION in net profit last year alone, it entitles you to such non-essential extravagance. Even my business isn’t immune to this reality. I pay my assistant to do paperwork, file stuff, mail stuff, and various other jobs that I despise. But I do this because my business is profitable. I am perfectly capable of doing these jobs myself, and if my business experienced a severe reversal, my assistant would find herself quickly unemployed.

 Not so, with our Federal government. How can an enterprise that routinely finds itself leaking a trillion dollars worth of oil every single year manage to have 800,000 non-essential employees? I mean, the government has 750,000 more non-essential employees than Apple has total employees. The government has more non-essential employees on the payroll than the entire population of San Francisco!

How on earth can this be? Just a few days ago I heard that noted expert on governmental efficiency, Nancy Pelosi, say that there was literally nothing else that the government could cut, that in fact the “cupboard was bare.” Nothing to cut?

Actually Nancy, I’ve done a quick, back of the napkin calculation, and have identified 536 non-essential employees who need immediate pink slips.