"Then identify the population to whom the targetted program is non-essential vs. the population to whom it is essential. Justify cutting off the latter population. "

Well, if a population of 10,000 govt employee can do what is done by 100,000 govt employees, then 90,000 of these govt employees are "non-essential".
For instance, over the years we have reduce the number people needed to farm in order to provide food for the rest of the population- probably on the order of 100 fold reduction. This has allowed an American [and other nations] to have more of the population in urban than rural areas. And this ultimately has reduced population growth worldwide- large family were no longer required for farming and other manual labor.
Another example the current computer revolution has seen huge amounts of money spent on computers, this money was spent not because companies just wanted to spend large sum of money, rather the reason was reduce the amount of labor required to conduct business.
The increase in productivity is not fundementally due to businesses spending money on computers, rather by spending money on computer one gets increase in the capacity of human labor to do work. The result of this is businesses grow and at least in the short term they lay-off or not hire as many people. So a result of this is that say, a microwave oven require less total manhours to make and distribute to the public today than it did 10 years ago.
If goverment were a rational entity, the computer revolution should have significantly reduced the amount of govt employees needed to govern- computers would have significantly reduced the amount work needed to be done. Computer all largely about reducing administration type manhours. But governents aren't rational, their focus is not on serving the public, they are not product driven, they are about getting and staying on the govt gravy train.
The simple fact is we are over taxed. The reason we are over taxed is because there is a much higher percent of people working in the govt, then is vaguely reasonable. Back in the day centuries ago when taxes were considered high if you were taxed 10% of our income, you probably had fewer than 10% of population in the govt. We should have the capacity to have lower percentage of govt employees than at any time in human history, instead we have much higher percent than any time in human history. When you consider that in a socialistic state, govt employees are doing most of the productivity- farming, making cars, providing power, mining etc, and in America govt does very little this work [because it's a capitalist country] we really have far more people in the administration function of govt than socialistic states. In other words we are grossly inefficent in regards to the governing aspect of government.
Why do we have the practice of having one teacher for about 30 students? There is only one answer, efficency. But when count up all the people involved in education per student you don't have this ratio of 30 to 1. Now what would happen if instead of having 1 teacher to 30 students you had say 1 teacher to 10 students? It's possible to have more teachers to students and more resources for students if we reduce the amount of adminstration personnel involved in education, and reducing the costs to educate each student and get better education for each student. We aren't doing this because it's an irrational system.