Remember in The Graduate, where the Dustin Hoffman character was advised to go into plastics? Now he would be advised to work for a Congress member:
A month after they voted to punish some corporate executives for taking hefty bonus payouts, members of the House of Representatives quietly gave their own staffers a new potential bonus by making even their top-earning aides eligible for taxpayer dollars to repay their student loans.
Or for that matter, for any boss in the federal government, where things have been booming for quite a while:
The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released its annual data on compensation levels by industry (Tables 6.2D, 6.3D, and 6.6D here). The data show that the pay advantage enjoyed by federal civilian workers over private-sector workers continues to expand.
If you live by the visual aid, here’s your cup of tea:
It didn’t start with Obama, as you can see. But we don’t think the trend will slow down now, do we? As matters stand, he may be the last of the big-time spenders. I’m getting a sandwich board announcing, “The end is near.”
As this fellow said two months ago,
Rising unemployment, stagnant wages, falling housing prices … The US economy has overcome such crises time and again in the past. But President Obama and his allies in Congress are gearing up to wallop families and businesses with an array of new taxes to fund a host of spending plans. These won’t just hit hard at average families — they threaten to derail any economic recovery.
Get ready.
Later: Government is a growth business. A case in point:
On Aug. 4, 1977, Jimmy Carter declared war on energy dependence and created the U.S. Department of Energy. Every president since has done the same. Today, 31 years later, the Department of Energy’s budget is $26 billion. It employs 16,000 people and 100,000 contract employees.
So what if we’re finally energy-independent? Huh?
We are no closer to energy independence than we were in 1977.
The whole concept of achieving it with a new department is a flop. F-L-O-P.
“And you want the federal government to run health care?” asks Barry Goldwater Jr. in American Spectator.
Blithe Spirit 