Why Budget Cuts Target Feds

Why exactly are Republicans in Congress are targeting so many of their proposed spending cuts at federal pay and benefits? Part of the reason, no doubt, is that many of them have run on anti-government platforms and genuinely believe that federal employees should bear their share of the country's economic pain.

But another reason, as Bruce Bartlett points out in The Fiscal Times, is that would-be budget whackers have backed themselves into a corner. "They seem to think that the budget consists of spending that Congress has to appropriate yearly," he writes. "In fact, only a minority of the budget falls into this category." He goes on:

Using fiscal year 2009 numbers for illustration, 65 percent of the budget was for mandatory programs that require no appropriation, such as Social Security and Medicare, as well as interest on the debt. The remaining part, which is called discretionary spending, is the only part that is controlled by the appropriations process. Of this, 53 percent went to national defense, which Republicans are unlikely to cut. All the rest came to less than $600 billion, or about 16 percent of total spending in 2009.

And it's not just entitlement programs and Defense that are currently off the table. GOP plans to slash up to $100 billion in spending in what remains of this fiscal year exempt Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, too. That leaves the remaining federal agencies to absorb cuts of between 15 percent and 30 percent. And that, in turn, virtually requires that employees take a substantial hit in their pocketbooks to make the numbers come close to adding up.