President Clinton Took An Axe To The US Federal Work Force

One of the biggest reasons that President Bill Clinton won the 1992 election was because of his promise to balance the federal budget.

Economic growth had stalled in the United States and deficits were expanding at a worrying rate. In 1992, the United States government posted a deficit of $290 billion. This is an absurdly low number relative to current day numbers, though back then the $290 billion number helped President Clinton win the election.

President Clinton sought to balance the budget through a combination of increased revenues (taxes) and lowered spending.

One initiative - the National Performance Review (subsequently renamed to the National Partnership for Reinventing Government), which sought to "make the entire Federal Government both less expensive and more efficient, and to change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment."

The slogan of the National Performance Review? "Make Government Work Better and Cost Less."

The National Partnership for Reinventing Government ultimately made nearly 400 recommendations to streamline the government.

One of those recommendations - an offer to buy out up to 272,000 federal workers for compensation of up to $25,000.

The legislation - HR 3345, or the Federal Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994, sought to offer buyouts of up to $25,000 for selected employees (mainly managers) at the DoD, CIA and General Accounting Office.

The bill passed with overwhelming support - 391-17 in the House and 99-1 in the Senate.

The Clinton Administration sought to minimize the number of "really ridiculous things that cost way too much money."

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When President Bill Clinton won the 1992 election, the federal workforce numbered roughly 3,083,000 people.

The numbers declined steadily during President Clinton's eight years in office, as the federal workforce was around 2.75 million when he left the White House.

These numbers more or less remained constant for around a decade and a half, and have begun to steadily creep higher over the past decade or so.

As of January 2025, the size of the federal workforce has grown to over 3 million people once again.

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During the 1990s, both parties - Democrats and Republicans - shared a desire to shrink the size of the government and the deficit. The plan to shrink the government took months to conjure up (six to be exact) and years to fully implement.



Filed under: General Knowledge