Belt-tightening ahead?

The Republican Study Committee—a conservative House Republican caucus—has come up with a bill loaded with spending cuts the group says could trim $2.5 trillion from the federal budget over the next 10 years.

The proposal digs right in, and calls for cuts that would bring Fiscal Year 2011 spending down to FY 2008 levels, which proponents calculate would save about $100 billion. (While GOP House leaders also back significant cuts, theirs tally closer to $60 billion for this fiscal year.)

Among other things, the RSC measure would generate savings through attrition-based workforce cuts (hiring one new worker for every two who leave), elimination of automatic pay increases for feds for five years, and cutting out the use of official union time.

The opposition—federal employee unions, a range of public interest groups, and many Democratic lawmakers—say this “starve the beast” strategy will make government less effective and hinder the delivery of services.

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents Patent and Trademark Office workers, has adopted the budget hawks’ new “job-killing” rhetoric, and turned it back at them. NTEU has been calling for more PTO funding, and says going back to 2008 levels could result in a 20 percent staffing cut. NTEU says such a cut would slow the introduction of new patents and thereby “harm our economic recovery, restrict the flow of new products to the marketplace and deprive unemployed Americans of the work these new inventions could create.”

Can your agency operate at 2008 funding levels?