The National Taxpayers Union Responds

To my earlier post on the cost of government, so I thought I'd pull it up from the comments, and respond myself:

I represent the National Taxpayers Union, the group whose figure you cited as "dubious" in your post.

Actually, the source of the estimate is the OPM itself. While researching legislation designated S 726 (in 2004), a bill to make election day a federal holiday, we spoke to Joe Radcliff of OPM

who said the cost is $30.7 million in holiday premium pay plus the cost of a day's pay. He estimated that annual payroll is approximately $103.5 billion, divided by the number of workdays (260) + $30.7 million = $428.77 million. Four years later, the payroll is larger monetarily, so the figure today is likely above $450 million.

Read what you want into whether or not $400-plus billion in lost productivity occurs because of a day off. That's more a commentary on office environments than hard numbers. Maybe that's why more than a few areas of the federal government have a public perception problem.

Pete Sepp

Vice President for Policy & Communications

National Taxpayers Union

If the numbers are from OPM, they're from OPM, and I'm not going to argue over the cost of a day's worth of federal salaries. But I do want to contest the idea that because President Bush decided to follow tradition and give federal employees a morale-boosting day off that most of them would have taken anyway, the federal government is suffering some kind of massive loss.

The government's paying that money in salary one way or another, and most folks would take that day off anyway. This isn't some additional fantastic sum out the door. Mr. Sepp's argument seems in the last paragraph seems to be that if I'm assuming there isn't a significant productivity loss, I'm conceding that federal employees don't work that hard, which isn't the case. Vacation time exists so folks can recharge, and come back to work more energetic than ever. Goodwill gestures like the executive order also build morale, which may be less quantifiable than salary/days=the money federal employees make in a single day, but morale and refreshed employees also have value to organizations and businesses. If we're going to make big, sweeping statements about lost value, let's consider the tangibles and intangibles, please, and give the President credit for considering both.