Government is EXPENSIVE

(Precursor to the following: yes, I know it costs money to provide the many important services that government performs, the pay gap remains hugely problematic, etc. Now that we know this, let's proceed...)

Two figures struck me today, one dubious, one not.

1) The Washington Times is reporting that according to one group, the Christmas holiday for Feds will cost $450 million in lost productivity and pay. Given that the group that's come up with that estimate is the National Taxpayers Union, I would be extremely curious to see the math behind that projection.

2) On less-dubious-more-scary ground, Marc Ambinder notes this:

A Treasury report out today pegs the U.S. government's operating cost at approximately $1 trillion, excluding transfer payments, which amounts to a trebling since 2007.

Most of the increase can be attributed to nearly $550b worth of "post-employment liabilities" -- pensions, health benefits -- for government employees, mostly veterans, liaibilities that, for some reason, either weren't estimated properly in 2007 or were simply ignored.

What I doubt here is not Marc's reading of the math, but the rationale that left those figures out of the calculations in the first place. For serious. Employment costs are part of operation costs. I have no idea how anyone justifies excluding those from an estimate.