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"There are many Freepers who work for the federal government who are hard working decent people. To wish that people lose their livelihood just because they work for Uncle Sam is cruel."

Maybe. However, federal government workers earn substantially more in salary and benefits than those with equivalent jobs in the private sector. Years back, it was just the opposite. People still worked for the government for reasons of pensions and job stability. That equivalence needs to be restored.

However, federal government workers earn substantially more in salary and benefits than those with equivalent jobs in the private sector.

Actually they may have between 9/11 and 2007 due to ramping up for war on terror, but they don't now. The two studies that showed they did failed to adjust for education. The majority of the federal workforce has BSc or higher. In the DoD agency I worked at the MINIMUM education required for hire has always been a MSc in a hard science with required credits in math and hard science (engineering, physics, or math). The DoD RDT&E community has contracted out the low education jobs, so almost all the jobs are professional degrees (MSc, PhD, J.D.). Here is a CBO chart from 2005-2010 showing the comparison then; in reality the wage freeze since 2010 has hurt government scientists and engineers much worse than the private sector (based on salary and benefits among private contractors vs. government). It is true that blue collar jobs pay better, but there are very few of them, and they are specialized labor (e.g. fabrication, test range workers).

Here is CBO Link.

Some of the richest counties in the USA are the ones around Washington D.C.

I follow the media business as in radio and for many years the leading radio station in terms of ad revenue nationwide has been in Washington D.C. instead of bigger markets like NY, LA, Chicago.......

The taxpayers are subsidizing a pocket of elite wealth in and around Washington D.C.

That is not always true. When I went to the Federal Government in the IT sector it was at 1/3 of what I was offered in Raleigh-Durham-Triage back in 1999. I never made up the difference. At the Dept of State, any single aspect of my responsibilities would have made more in systems, networking, Communications, Telephone, Radio. Sometimes a government employee is a great deal for the tax payer - when you replace those employees with contractors the bill doubles easily, and it takes more at end of year. However, there are too many folks in the Federal Government.

However, federal government workers earn substantially more in salary and benefits than those with equivalent jobs in the private sector. Years back, it was just the opposite.

I'll disagree with you there. Take for instance a civil engineer. As a GS-09 they can get paid $49,000 - $57,000 base salary. A civil engineer in the civil sector easily gets paid twice that amount, many times three times that amount.

People still worked for the government for reasons of pensions and job stability. That equivalence needs to be restored.

I won't deny there are abuses in this category. I know people who are drawing money from the government in three different way; a military retirement, a civil service pension, and working part-time for the that same government service. That kind of abuse needs to be dealt with, and harshly.

But then there are those of us who will be lucky to draw any kind of decent pension when we reach 62 years of age now. I'll probably be working until I drop.

So yes, while there are abuses, there are many of us who will likely never see a decent pension when we are eligible for retirement.