Republicans have long asserted that people employed by private companies are paid significantly less than federal workers.
It’s common knowledge that you make more money in the private sector.
I work for the federal government, and some parts of my department have lost 50%+ of their engineers to Boeing and Blue Origin in the last few years. That is completely unsustainable attrition, and yet our leadership does jack shit to try to increase our compensation (there are ways, but it takes damn near an act of Congress, or more likely, an act of God). And our leaderships atrocious attempts at dealing with the attrition problem are just driving more engineers away.
So to summarize, republicans are anti-federal workforce and are also lying sacks of shit.
I also work for the federal government. So I know that the work that your colleagues are not around anymore to do will ultimately have to get outsourced to Boeing, BO, Raytheon, etc and with all of the acquisition overhead and profits the contractors are building in, it ends up costing the taxpayers more to do the same work. More even than the differential of the salaries that your former colleagues are enjoying.
The work we do doesn’t actually get pushed to contractors. Rather, we just keep taking delays and moving deadlines, none of which helps us maintain our national security posture. It has the potential to be a very serious problem.
Your point about the skyrocketing cost to taxpayers is accurate, however.