only 25% said yes. the government is too big. it has grown too fast. it doesn t do anything well. reporter: the huge percentage of government workers deemed non-essential in many agencies suggests to some that there s plenty of fat to trim, especially given that many of its functions are automated. unlike local governments that have a lot of useful services, like fire and police and k-12 schools, the federal government is mainly just a giant cash transfer machine. it taxes people, then computers send the checks out the door through programs like social security and medicare. reporter: take the department of agriculture, for example. it employs roughly 99,000 people to service the roughly 1.4 million americans employed in farms. there s an old joke that agriculture employee walked into his colleague s office and said, what s the matter? and he said, i m really upset my farmer died. it s not quite a 1-to-1 ratio, but it is still a much larger
embarrassing emails from the white house. including agriculture employee minimize the cuts only to receive a quick response from his boss to, quote, make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be. translation, if it s not bad, make it bad? why rudy giuliani says all of this is looking very bad for the white house. more from him on the snow job in a moment. first, to the washington examiner s tim carney on just how big a pile of well, snow we are looking at right now. what are we looking at here? well, it is another case of the white house widening the deficit of trust. that was the phrase obama used when he was in his first year in office. he said we need to close this deficit of trust where the people can t trust their government. obviously here if the administration is going out, and trying to make the sequester look worse than it actually is, look as bad as possible, that is not good governance that is
a bill like that is the kind of thing presidencies are made of, and this is how nbc nightly news opened its show on that historic night. from nbc news world headquarters in new york, this is nbc nightly news with brian williams. a short time ago in washington the secretary of agriculture entered a press conference and apologize it had to a low level employee he fired after a short piece of video came out that hardly told the full story. on the day that president obama signed wall street reform into law. the news media, as well as the obama administration, were consumed entirely by something entirely else. shirley sharrod. remember the shirley sharrod scandal. she was an agriculture employee who was thrust into the spotlight after a clip on her
remember the shirley sharrod scandal. she was an agriculture employee who was thrust into the spotlight after a clip on her was posted online by a conservative website. it was played on a constant loop on fox news and conservative blogs. it showed an african-american government official admits to denying assistance in white farmers. it made it seem like the government was employing an openly proud reverse racist, an anti-white people bigot. while the rest of the news media was covering, you know, news, fox news and right wing blogs were running with this story like it was watergate on steroids. break news tonight about an ags culture department official caught on tape making racially charged comments. that is simply unacceptable and miss sharrod must resign immediately.
wednesday, july 21st, 2010, a huge day for the obama administration. a bill like that is the kind of thing presidencies are made of, and this is how nbc nightly news opened its show on that historic night. from nbc news world headquarters in new york, this is nbc nightly news with brian williams. a short time ago in washington the secretary of agriculture entered a press conference and apologize it had to a low level employee he fired after a short piece of video came out that hardly told the full story. on the day that president obama signed wall street reform into law. the news media, as well as the obama administration, were consumed entirely by something entirely else. shirley sharrod. remember the shirley sharrod scandal. she was an agriculture employee