Good point. The comparison should be civilian workers. Also, the comparison should be inflation adjusted non-defense dollars.
The author’s point is irrelevant. If you cannot pay for services without going into additional debt then you are still too big.
Here’s the dirty little secret about the civilian Government workforce.
I’m sure that the size of the civilian Government workforce HAS shrunk over the years. That is always a politician’s favorite talking point at election time.
However, the work still needs to be done.
The Government’s solution is to replace Government workers with contractors. Therefore, the Government pays the (often higher) contractor salaries for the workers, pays for another layer of managers (also contractor) and pays for the profit margin of the contract.
Therefore, the politicians get to crow about how the Government workforce has been cut, but the cost (to the taxpayers)of the Government doing business continues to rise!