Daily Caller columnist Gary Aldrich has a “plan to restore fiscal sanity” that the Caller promotes with the page title “Balance the budget | cut federal workforce.” But Aldrich's plan wouldn't balance the budget -- not even close. Here it is:

As our country moves closer to bankruptcy, the only chance we have at balancing our budget is to make substantial cuts to the ever-expanding bureaucracy.

…

A target goal of reducing the federal workforce by 25 percent, excluding military personnel, would go a lot further in solving the mess our country faces.

Aldrich never gets around to including any estimates of how much this would save, probably because the answer is “not much.” The 2011 deficit is projected to be about $1.5 trillion. There are about 1.3 million non-Defense civilian Federal employees, and they make about $163 billion in salary and benefits. Cut 25 percent of that, and you've saved about $40 billion -- and, thus, shaved a mere 2.71 percent from the deficit.

But that's not all: You've also thrown 325,000 people out of work, which tends to be bad for the economy, which tends to be bad for the deficit. In any case, it's 325,000 more unemployed people. You know … if you care about that kind of thing. Gary Aldrich doesn't.