78-13-B6
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Government Payroll[edit]
Transcript[edit]According to accepted figures about 16 million of the nation's work force is employed by government at all levels--federal, state and local. The federal government is the employer of nearly three million (these are non-military) and that payroll is increasing by about 28,000 a year. I seem to remember there was some campaign talk about reducing the total. We can be pretty sure of these figures because the Civil Service Commission publishes the total every month. But can we be sure? The answer to that is "no". The federal government doesn't really know how many people it has put to work. Unknown numbers are paid indirectly through government contracts, research grants and even payments to state and local governments. The Secretary of H.E.W. has 144,000 employees in his agency, but the other day he told a Congressional committee that H.E.W. probably pays the salaries of an additional 980,000 who don't appear on the federal roster. Other government departments and agencies admit this is true of them, too. The Washington POST did some surveying and came up with an estimate that puts the actual federal civilian work force at around six to seven million. If the three million we know about are increasing by 28,000 a year, we must assume that the other three to four million is also growing in numbers. It's easy to see why Congress had to go through what has become an annual ritual--the raising of the debt limit a few weeks ago. In just eight years the debt has gone from $377 billion to $814 billion. If the present trends continue, we will have a trillion dollar debt, a trillion dollar budget, and $200 billion of that will be for interest on that debt--and all by 1985. Anyone for a national Prop. 13? This is a slight change in subject, but a research project called "Unraveling the Congressional Security Blanket" reveals an interesting co-relationship between the number of staff members and the number of bills introduced in the House and Senate. In the last 20 years the staff for House Members has tripled and in the Senate more than doubled. In those same 20 years the number of bills introduced has increased by 77 percent. In 1958 there were 13,876. In the 94th Congress which adjourned in '76--24,583. The present Congress is faced with more than 20,000 already. In the first Congress which adjourned in 1790, only 142 bills were introduced and 108 became law. From my own experience as Governor, I know that legislative aides and Congressional staff author most of the legislative proposals. They have to justify their existence. Now suppose that last Congress with its 24,583 bills had held no committee meetings, no floor sessions, the members had spent eight hours a day, five days a week at their desks reading those bills 50 weeks of the year for the two year session. (we'll give them a two week vacation each year.) They could give each bill less than 10 minutes time. Some of those bills are hundreds of pages long. That sure does explain some of our problems. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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