“In the real world, in fact, many of their ‘cuts’ cut nothing at all. The Transportation Department got credit for ‘cutting’ a $280 million tunnel that had been canceled six months earlier. It also ‘cut’ a $375,000 road project that had been created by a legislative typo, on a road that did not exist. At the Census Bureau, officials got credit for a whopping $6 billion cut, simply for obeying the calendar. They promised not to hold the expensive 2010 census again in 2011. Today, an examination of 12 of the largest cuts shows that, thanks in part to these gimmicks, federal agencies absorbed $23 billion in reductions without losing a single employee.”
