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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - August 17, 2010
Putting Government First
by: Pat Buchanan
Where a man's purse is, there his heart will be also.
If you would know where the heart of the Obama party
is today, consider. In the dog days of August, with
temperatures in D.C. rising above 100, Nancy Pelosi
called the House back to Washington to enact legislation
that could not wait until September.
Purpose: Vote $26 billion to prevent layoffs of state,
municipal and county employees whose own governments had
decided they had to be let go if they were to meet their
constitutional duty to balance their books.
Workers their own governments thought expendable, Congress
decided were so essential, it borrowed another 26 thousand
million dollars from China to keep them on state and local
payrolls.
A nation whose national debt is approaching the size of its
gross national product, that goes abroad to borrow money to
keep non-essential workers on government payroll is a
nation on the way down and out.
And anyone who thinks this Obama party is ever going to
cull the armies of tens of millions of government workers
or scores of millions of government beneficiaries to put
America's house in order is deluding himself.
As long as this Congress and White House remain in power,
a U.S. default on its national debt is inevitable. The
only question is when.
Nor is this the first time the Obama administration has
rushed to save workers whom their own state, city and
county governments were prepared to let go. Among the
reasons the $800 billion stimulus failed is that so little
of it was directed to firing up the locomotive of the
economy, the private sector, and so much of it was spent
to ensure that government workers did not have to share in
the national sacrifice.
Why Pelosi & Co felt compelled to return to D.C., to ensure
that state and local government payrolls were not pared,
is not hard to understand.
Which party does the American Federation of Teachers; the
National Education Association; and the American Federation
of State, Municipal and County Employees usually contribute
to, work for, vote for? At which of the two party convent-
ions are teachers and government employees hugely over-
represented?
Consider, too, the states deepest in debt and facing the
largest cuts in employee ranks, pay and benefits:
California, Illinois, New York.
In these states, public employees earn at least $10,000
per year more in pay and benefits than the average America
worker, who is bailing them out.
Hence, we have a situation where private sector workers in
Middle America are being taxed, their children being driven
ever deeper into debt to China, so government employees
who have greater job security than they do, and earn more
in pay and benefits than they will ever earn, can stay in
Fat City.
And folks wonder why so many Americans detest government.
In the same week Congress came back to prevent AFSCME from
taking a haircut, the Wall Street Journal reported that,
in 2009, only three of 52 metro areas with over 1 million
in population saw "net earnings and the broader measure of
personal income both rise."
Are you surprised to learn Washington, D.C., was among the
three?
That same day, USA Today had a startling report on how,
during the last decade, U.S. Government workers, like Wall
Street bankers, left their fellow Americans in the dust.
"Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and
benefit increases than private employees for nine years in
a row. The compensation gap between federal and private
workers has doubled in the past decade.
"Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of
$123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in
total compensation. ... The Federal compensation advantage
has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year."
Remarkable. U.S. government workers, who enjoy the greatest
job security of any Americans, now earn twice as much in
pay and benefits as the average American. This is not the
D.C. some of us grew up in.
Nor is this all Obama's doing. For most of the fat years
of the federal work force came while Washington was being
run by a Congress of Big-Government Conservatives and a
White House of Bush-Cheney Republicans.
No wonder the tea party is targeting both parties.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to believe that the
Obamaites, who intervened twice and massively with bailouts
to prevent minor layoffs of local and state government
employees, have the stomach to do the major surgery needed
to cut the federal monolith down to size.
For the vast majority of the tens of millions of government
workers vote Democratic, as do the vast majority of the
scores of millions of beneficiaries of federal, state and
local programs.
What Pelosi & Co. were saying with that $26 billion bailout
this week is, "We are going to protect our own."
Which is why either Obama, Pelosi, Reid & Co. go, or we
are gone.
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