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I don’t think I’d classify this as a recession episode.

You end up with 120k people in the DC area who will be let go...who all tend to make $70k or more....with no other industry within 100 miles that would ever offer them another job. A second wave of people...from the service industry in DC...probably around 20k...would lose their jobs in the months after the first wave.

Foreclosures and dumped cars would be the norm within six months. Property values would drop. Bankruptcies would jump by thirty percent in the local area easily.

I should add...that only covers the DC region. This would be a giant wave across the US. Figure at least 250k gov’t workers would eventually be dumped. No industry or business operation is going to pick these guys up.

If you wanted a 1930’s style depression...this would be the most practical way of accomplishing that.

I will offer this observation...there are various ways to cut the budget and start to do a yearly five-percent cut on personnel for four years. You could force early retirement onto a quarter of the candidates very easily. You could shutdown fifty national parks within thirty days and just declare them closed to the public, or offer them to states who want to pay and maintain them.

There are smart ways of handing budget cuts. So far, I haven’t’ seen any idiot on TV willing to explain them in public. I think most people want to just keep going with everything intact.

Regardless of the gloom and doom portrait that you paint, it is exactly what has to happen. The Federal government spends 40% MORE than they take in. That is allot of lay offs and department closures.

An expendable government department and employee is just that, expendable. Even those that are not expendable, become expendable when the hatchet falls. By all means, FIRE many of them. DC will have to suffer. Start with every one in the EPA. Leave one guy to answer the phone, or not.

All those left, 30% pay cut, 10 personal days, No pension, 3% 401K/403B match, THEY pay 50% of their health care insurance. All retirees 30% pension hair cut, They pay their own Medicare Supplements. That is what happens in Bankruptcies and the U.S. Government is bankrupt.

Better yet, DO NOT increase the debt ceiling. Simply live on the monthly revenue and start to SELL government lands on the open market. The U.S. Government owns trillions of dollars and hundreds of millions of hectares of land, and a vast majority is NOT parks. They own hundreds of billions of dollars worth of buildings, Sell them all, lease back what is absolutely necessary.

United States government has direct ownership of almost 650 million acres of land (2.63 million square kilometers) – nearly 30% of its total territory. Sell some of it, Hell sell most of it. What you can not sell LEASE for the mineral rights.

Also formulate a plan for the unavoidable default that is destined to happen when no one wants our worthless paper. Remember the Federal Reserve is buying around 70% of the debt issued RIGHT NOW! We are going to have to decide what portion of the debt can be paid and reduce the payment made to that amount. Once again that is what happens during a bankruptcy. And the U.S. Government is Bankrupt. They live high on the hog, way above their means.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. a band aid removed quickly is painful for the least period of time.

“This would be a giant wave across the US. Figure at least 250k gov’t workers would eventually be dumped.”

Over the past few years (thanks to Governor Christie and his property tax cap) NJ has laid off THOUSANDS of cops, teachers, and firefighters - mostly in areas that weren’t paying them out of their own property tax bases (as the rest of us have to do in NJ). Fed and state aid ran out, and the layoffs have been coming every year since as these workers fight for 4+% annual raises but can only be paid out of 2% tax hikes. Each year there will be less of these workers, but they will be a year older and a year more expensive.

“You could force early retirement onto a quarter of the candidates very easily.”

An increasing number of these workers are rejecting buyouts because they know they have no value in the private sector, they spent their oversized paychecks as they “worked”, and their compensation and perks are so superior to anything the private sector offers anyone else at this point (unless you are a CEO).

“I think most people want to just keep going with everything intact.”

Most middle class people know this is impossible; our taxes have remained high as wages remain stagnant and are eaten away by inflation. The permanent multi-generational welfare class wants things to continue as usual; here in NJ they are looking at a grim reality as their police protection is pulled and their neighborhoods start to resemble Mogadishu.