Paraphrasing The Quote Misattributed To Stalin: The Loss Of One Dollar Is A Tragedy, The Loss Of 500 Billion Dollars Is A Statistic

Fun with numbers:

When I was watching the debate last night I did a double-take when I heard Newt say that ‘reforming’ the federal Civil Service system could save “a minimum of $500 billion a year.”

...Well, we looked into it and it turns out that the federal government’s entire payroll, even including the military, came to just $432.6 billion in fiscal 2011. In other words, if you fired everyone who works for the federal government you couldn’t save $500 billion.