Soon after Bill Clinton was elected Al Gore pushed through Congress his Reinventing Government Initiative, which mandsted an across the board 30% cut in the Federal civilian workforce. And in the case of DoD that 30% did not include the overall 40% plus cut it was already undergoing.

Congressional Democrats had a little talk with Bill, and at the signing of the bill he somewhat sheepishly announced that Congress had already cut its own workforce and thus the cuts would not apply to them.

I won’t go into the details of the Reinventing Govt bill or the asburd way it was implemented by the Denizens of DC – suffice to say they looked to have written by the KGB and implemented by Al Queda – but the attacks of 9/11/01, the loss of the Shuttle Columbia, and multiple procurement disasters since then are all due in part to Reinventing Government.