The shutdown is over, but while it went on and Democrats obstructed on border security, no noticeable change to American’s everyday life happened. This leads attorney Dan Backer to conclude that the size of the federal government should be slashed.

According to The Daily Caller:

If American society can function perfectly fine — and even thrive — without the Washington swamp at its swampiest, then why exactly do we need the roughly 700,000 employees who have not been brought back from furlough? If the government’s “essential” functions are relatively unaffected, do we really need the “non-essential” government we haven’t really missed over the past month?

According to one senior Trump official, 80 percent of federal employees “feel no pressure to produce results.” So why exactly do we feel pressured to support them?

That’s why President Trump should take this historic opportunity — handed to him by Democrats — and pursue a sweeping Reduction in Force (RIF), ridding federal agencies of the bureaucratic excess blowing up our budget. Following in the footsteps of President Reagan — who fired hundreds of striking air traffic controllers in 1981 — the Trump administration could use RIFs to shrink the federal workforce by one-third and still uphold the core functions of the government, while saving untold billions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Look at it this way: There are currently more than two million federal employees, earning wages of $170 billion every year. The average federal worker makes roughly $77,000 — though it’s quite a bit higher “inside the Beltway.” When President Trump froze their wages and halted a 2.1 percent pay increase last month, he saved taxpayers an estimated $3.6 billion. That’s right: Stopping a 2.1 percent pay bump saved $3.6 billion!

As the national debt rises the need to reduce spending has become more important together, and as the author argues what better time to start than now.