There are at least two ways of looking at the fact the $2.5 trillion in spending cuts proposed last week by leaders of the House Republican Study Committee will hurt one of the biggest sources of Democratic campaign cash.

Among the proposals, which you can read about here and here, is a federal pay freeze and a 15 percent reduction in the federal workforce through attrition. If the proposal becomes law, it will freeze the income of hundreds of thousands of government employee unions and significantly reduce the number of dues-paying members of those unions.

To appreciate just how big an impact the proposed cuts would have on Democratic campaign funding, MAPLight breaks out the numbers:

"A look at campaign contributions to current members of Congress shows that federal employee unions heavily favored Democrat lawmakers when handing out campaign contributions. Democrats from both chambers combined have enjoyed a healthy 4-to-1 margin over their Republican counterparts since 2001."

The federal employee unions gave nearly $5 million to Democratic House and Senate candidates between 2001 and the 2010 campaign, according to data cited by MAPLight from the Center for Responsive Politics, compared to just over $1 million to Republicans.

In other words, Democrats got 82 percent of the campaign cash contributed by federal employee unions.

MAPLight points to another interesting aspect of this question, noting that contributions from defense industry firms are almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, though with a slight tilt in favor of the latter.

Since 2001, defense firms contributed more than $23.5 million to Republican incumbents, compared to just over $21.2 million to Democrats, a 52-47 percent division between the two parties.

Defense industry contributions are not infrequently assumed to be tilted very much in favor of Republicans who consistently vote more solidly in favor of bigger defense budgets than do Democrats.

For more from MAPLight on these numbers, go here.

And the two ways to look at these datum? The conventional wisdom focuses on the fact the GOP is proposing spending cuts that will have a negative impact on federal employees, who deliver vital services like Social Security checks.

That approach typically ignores any evidence that even with a 15 percent reduction in the 2.0-million-plus federal civil service, the Social Security checks would continue to be delivered on time, and the federal government could continue providing all of the essential services it does at current workforce levels.

But there is another way of looking at these numbers. Democrats depend upon campaign contributions from unions, and that increasingly means from federal employee unions, who represent the only growth sector for the labor movement.

And how do Democrats keep the campaign cash rolling in from the unions? By continually supporting bigger federal budgets and more federal regulations as the justification for an ever-growing federal workforce, which in turn produces more dues-paying union members and more campaign cash for their Democratic benefactors in Congress and the executive branch.

Thus, any effort by Republicans to limit government spending and growth will justifiably be seen by Democrats and unionized federal workers as a threat, regardless of the merits of the case being presented by the GOP.

Or to put it in a slightly more direct light, it's not about keeping those Social Security checks coming for the old folks that most worries Democrats and federal employee union leaders, it's keeping the fatter paychecks coming for the bureaucrats so their unions can continue writing big campaign contribution checks to Democrats.

Don't expect to read this sort of analysis in the Washington Post or New York Times.