Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There have been lots of articles in the Washington Newspapers recently about the upcoming budget battles that are coming to Washington DC. If the Republicans come in to power expect some serious cuts to the Federal Budget. Also the Defense Department is cutting back on its contracts to local consulting firms and trying to be more efficent on how they do things. This will involve moving lots of the defense related jobs out of the DC area.
Actually the Washington DC area has become even more dependent on government spending and government contracting in recent years. Once America finally starts cutting federal spending-- look out DC!
You mean like how the DC area crashed after '94, when the Republicans took Congress, and '00, when Bush took the White House? Everyone always comes to Washington talking about changing it, or shrinking it, or attempting to do away with it, but we all know how well that has worked in the past.
Things might grow more slowly here the next few years, but it seems pretty unlikely that the Republicans will actually manage to shrink the size of the federal government.
Ummm....only about 15% of all Fed Govt jobs are in the DC area. Far too many people equate DC and Federal Workforce as one in the same.
Would any cuts in govt. spending be proportional to this area, ie. 15% of all fed job cuts be here and 85% the rest of the country? I don't know.
Has the DC area become more dependent on federal spending as opposed to less? Again, I don't know, but if it has, thank the doofus transients for that.
Some people love to gloat that the DC area will be singularly hurt by major cuts in govt spending, and its very shallow thinking.
85% of all federal govt jobs are located outside the DC area. So I'll guess that 85% of all govt cuts will happen outside of the DC area. Furthermore, I don't think anyone here has any hard data on how many jobs here are actually dependent on govt spending.
In the past year alone, companies like Hilton, SAIC, Volkswagon USA, CSC, VeriSign among other moved headquarters here. Some because of access to the Fed Govt, some not at all.
I just think its a sign of simple minded thinking to assume 1) that DC area is only about goverment, 2) that any cuts in government will only affect DC.
But I give up trying to get people on this board to look at things in a reasonable manner.
If you take all the federal employees and government contractors in the area they are about fifty percent of economic activity. If the spending is cut, the DC areas economy will take a huge hit.
Yes 85% of the federal spending is outside of the DC area but we depend on federal spending for our economic output much more than almost any other large metro area.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
