With the release this week of a provocative effort to rein in the federal budget deficit, the question for my readers is simple, where would you cut the budget?

A lot of people say Congress should start with its own cuts, as the budget for the Legislative Branch has almost doubled in the last ten years.  But even a 15% cut in the budget of Congress only gets you about a half billion dollars in savings.

So where else do you look?  Well, when you run down the largest employers in the Executive Branch, you see where most of the money goes in the budget, outside of Social Security and Medicare.

The Defense Department has over 675,000 employees.  Veterans programs total almost 300,000.  Homeland Security is over 186,000.

But when you talk about cutting the budget, a lot of Republicans say those three areas must be exempted from cuts, because they are too important.

Well, the problem is, you can take the major agencies - all of them - outside of the military, veterans and homeland defense, and you just don't have much to cut from.

In fact, if you add together all of the employees at Justice, Treasury, Agriculture, Health & Human Services, Interior, Social Security, Transportation, Commerce, NASA, EPA, Labor, Energy, State Deparmtent, Education and more, you don't even equal the manpower at work in the military, veterans programs and homeland defense.

Back in the 1990's, GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich was the chief advocate of a smaller government, but he also tried to target the military, arguing that the Pentagon was filled with opportunities to streamline its operations.

"Our goal should be to turn the Pentagon into a triangle by reducing at least 40 percent of the unnecessary duplication and waste that's in the system," Gingrich argued.

Gingrich's "Pentagon-to-Triangle" call went nowhere, especially in his own party.  Since then, the Pentagon's budget has basically doubled.

So where would you cut?  Here is a list of the largest federal agencies and departments and the number of workers there. 

Where would you cut?

And then, don't deal with the top three, as the Republicans have proposed.  What do you cut back with the military, homeland defense and veterans spending off limits?

Where would you cut?

Defense            675,272
Veterans Affairs    297,234
Homeland Security    186,066
Justice            112,482
Treasury        108,895
Agriculture        106,298
Health/Human Services    79,427
Interior        76,647
Social Security        67,632
Transportation        57,587
Commerce        49,414
NASA            18,522
EPA            18,448
Labor            15,981
Energy            15,826
General Services Administration    12,490
State Department    11,469
Housing/Urban Development    9,563
Office of Personnel Mgt    5,832
Education        4,218
Nuclear Regulatory Commission    4,151
Small Business Administration    3,927
Agency for International Development    2,813
National Science Foundation    1,482