Cutting Federal Pay 40 Percent, Eliminating Government Unions and More From the Campaign Trail

The presidential field has downsized, but the remaining presidential candidates are only increasing their rhetoric about the federal civil service.

At a town hall hosted by CNN on Thursday, former Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla., was asked a fairly standard campaign trail question about what he would do to reduce U.S. debt. Bush laid out three tenets of his plan, two of which matched standard Republican rhetoric: growing the economy through tax and regulatory reform, and reducing entitlement costs.

The third pillar the son and brother of former presidents laid out, however, was more unusual coming from the 2016 contenders: cutting the pay of federal employees.

“Government workers in Washington get paid 40 percent more than their equivalent workers in the private sector,” Bush said. “Why? They're supposed to be the servants, not the masters.”

The former governor who is struggling in the polls called for career civil service reforms.

“There shouldn't be lifetime guarantees for government workers,” he said. “People -- we're stuck -- we're stuck in a 20th century world where the 20th century's bureaucracy [is] in a 21st century world.” Bush went on to promise to apply the change he brought to state employees in Florida at the federal level. During his two terms, Bush successfully converted managers and supervisors into at-will employees and trimmed the number of state workers by 25 percent.

Ben Carson, in a different town hall this week, also called for reforming the civil service, addressing another way to potentially hold feds more accountable. At an event in South Carolina, the retired neurosurgeon said he would do away with all public sector unions.

“There shouldn't be unions in the government,” Carson said, according to Politico. He added that organized labor in the federal government created a conflict with employees who are supposed to be working for the American people. He joined several members of Congress who are also pushing to make it more difficult for federal workers to unionize and collectively bargain.

Carson has previously promised to appoint a “chief organizational architect” to ensure “every agency, department and management executive will be held accountable for the resources they use and the value they create for the American people.”

On the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., focused at an MSNBC town hall in Nevada on how federal agencies can tweak hiring, rather than firing. Asked how he would ensure returning veterans receive jobs commensurate with their skills and abilities, Sanders pointed to Uncle Sam.

“We have to give a priority in terms of federal employment,” Sanders said. He added veterans make for “very, very good workers” because of what they “incurred in the military.”

The federal government, of course, already prioritizes hiring veterans, and one-third of all new hires in fiscal 2014 were former uniformed military. Veterans represent about 31 percent of the federal workforce, and some good government advocates have actually raised concerns that veterans’ preference has become detrimental for agencies looking to attract top talent.