Snapped Shot

I see, via Sweetness and Light, that Hillary Clinton is promising to slash 500,000 contracting positions off of the Federal rolls if elected:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that if elected she would put an end to the outsourcing of critical government functions to the private sector and axe up to half a million federal contracting jobs.

Considering that approximately 499,999 of the 500,000 contractors (okay, so I'm exaggerating a touch) currently reporting to Washington, D.C. live in Northern Virginia, it'd be interesting to see how this affects our economy up here.

Personally, I'd love to see some of these superfluous contracts go away. I've seen more waste in the past 5 years of contracting than I ever dreamed existed, from last-minute fiscal-year spending sprees, to employees being kept on the job because the overall contract demands that they be there, demand or not. But seriously, if Hillary Clinton thinks that killing the Northern Virginia economy to spite the evils of contracting, I can't imagine that Richmond would be too happy about it.

There's plenty to clean up in contracting. But to blame the problems we're seeing on the Bush Administration is absurd -- There are plenty of works decrying the evils of contracting from the 1800's, if you're under the delusion that this is a "modern" affliction. And if any of you think that turning all of these "contract" positions into Federally-unionized Civil Service jobs would actually solve anything?

Well, let's just say that I'd be happy to start taking bids on Key Bridge.

Hillary, you're barking up the wrong tree. Cutting your stanch supporters in Northern Virginia off at the knees is not going to win you any friends.

Then again, as a Republican, I guess I should encourage her to keep on truckin', huh?