[juancn]

Well, salaries are about 15% of the federal budget, you don't necessarily need to cut jobs to reduce spending.

You may even increase it and still reduce spending since it's such a small part of the spending.

[dvdhnt]

While true, the larger the ship, the more difficult it is to turn. I think the idea is that for every salaried individual, you have support staff, equipment, benefits, etc that come along with them. It’s also another cog in the chain of work that needs to be done.

For example, there are at least 1200 positions that need to be confirmed. It can take half the presidency to staff a full cabinet. I think we can agree that’s excessive.