GOP Budget Plan Cuts Fed Workforce, Freezes Pay For 5 Years

House Republicans unveiled a plan Tuesday that would cut the federal workforce by 10 percent in the next three years through attrition and freeze federal pay for five years.
 
The plan - called the Path to Prosperity - would also reform government workers' "generous benefit programs," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) in a press conference Tuesday.
 
The House plan far exceeds the $1 trillion in cuts in President Obama's fiscal year 2012 budget plan released in February.
The Path to Prosperity would also incorporate Defense Secretary Robert Gates' plan to target DoD inefficiencies, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
 
"Look, the facts are very, very clear. For too long Washington has not been honest with the American people. Washington has been making empty promises to a country that is going broke," Ryan said at the Tuesday press conference.
 
The Path to Prosperity would impose "enforceable caps" on spending and "make sure government spends and taxes only as much as it needs to fulfill its constitutionally prescribed roles," Ryan wrote in his op-ed.
 
The plan would set spending at below 20 percent of gross domestic product and put the country on a path to pay off the national debt, reducing the deficit by $4.4 trillion, Ryan said Tuesday.
 
The $6.2 trillion in savings would actually be less when measured against the Congressional Budget Office "baseline."

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