Is this a problem or an opportunity?

U.S. News & World Report this week reports on a new impending crisis for the Federal Government: Half of the government work force can retire in the next five years. Now I enjoy U.S. News & World Report, but where they see a problem, I see an opportunity. As a conservative, I'm firm believer that the smaller the Federal Gub'mint is, the fewer problems it can create. One of the biggest impediments to shrinking government, though, is how to reduce the employment rolls. If you try to shrink the government without shrinking the employment rolls, you've done nothing. Laying off government employees is bad news for a politician, though, even in the best of economic times. So how do you shrink government without committing political suicide? Easy. You let the payroll reduce itself.

Right now we are looking at a once in a generation opportunity. Half of the government payroll will be set to retire in the next five years. Now is the time to combine and or eliminate positions. It is a painless way to make government more streamlines and more efficient. For those of us who believe in small government, this has to be acted upon now. Government by its very nature only gets bigger and bigger. We are being served a demographic gift on a silver platter right now. This is a natural opportunity to shrink government before it demographic demands cause its inevitable swell again.

Now for those of you who are not conservative and say that decreasing the government payroll will only lead to poorer government services, I'll split the difference with you. Government jobs do not always attract the most talented of employees. Want to change that? Entice better workers with better pay. I'll bank half of the savings from reducing the work force, and I'll give you the other half in better pay in targeted jobs. That's not very conservative of me; in fact, every conservative bone in me screams to bank the whole thing. I recognize that government service does stink, though, and I'm willing to make the effort to improve a necessary evil.