The Slimdown

We're a day into the shutdown, and it doesn't appear to be a shutdown at all.  Investor's Business Daily covers some of what is happening.

A Sept. 26 letter from the assistant to the president for management and administration to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (couldn’t those jobs be merged?) comically outlines the shutdown plan.
“Approximately 436 employees will be designated as excepted or exempt to perform excepted functions,” the manager of the White House budget tells the manager of the executive branch budget. “The remaining 1,265 will be placed in furlough status once they have concluded activities necessary to shut down their offices.”
Activities like what? Turning off the lights?
The Executive Office of the President “has carefully reviewed its personnel needs … to ensure that the mission … is carried out without significant interruption.”
But the letter says during the shutdown it’ll take 12 taxpayer-paid employees “to support the vice president in the discharge of his constitutional duties.” Call them the dirty dozen, since they take care of what Vice President John Nance Garner called “a bucket of warm spit.”
What do these 12 absolutely essential non-Secret Service vice-presidential staff do, guarantee that Joe Biden doesn’t make a gaffe during the shutdown?

As Instapundit says, go read the whole thing.  But, I have trouble believing that the whole government is in trouble.  Non-essential personnel are, by definition, non-essential.  There's plenty of fat to cut, and the government needs to slim down.

Let's start with a 5% budget cut.  Not a 5% reduction in the increase, but an actual 5% budget cut, across the board and reduce the budget by 5% per year until the budget is balanced.  Then, freeze spending for five years to pay down the debt.