[jhedwards]

Could you help clarify something for me? When I looked into the federal workforce, just looking at raw numbers without much insight about the "inside", it doesn't seem particularly bloated or wasteful to me: it runs at ~5% of the federal budget and at 2mil people it is about 0.5% of the population.

It looks like you and some other commenters, however, are discussing government contracts, which are projects and programs paid for the government but implemented by third-party contractors. Is that correct?

[cuuupid]

Yes, they are correlated ; contracts are created with budget authority afforded to federal employees. Essentially the only way to get promoted is to amass reports and budget, and use it in some way.

So it’s basically like this: yes, the federal government creates jobs and the cost of those jobs directly is only 5% of the budget. However the real cost of those jobs is in spending, in terms of opportunities they champion, which essentially amounts to all discretionary spending conducted by the federal government — ~30% of the budget.