Obama, Pelosi and Reid: Putting Government First

By Patrick J. Buchanan (Creators Syndicate) - Las Vegas Review-Journal

Where a man's purse is, there his heart will be also.

If you wish to know where the heart of the Obama party 

is today, consider: In the dog says 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, county 

and municipal 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 its gross national 

product, that goes abroad to borrow to keep non-essential 

workers on the government payroll, is a nation on the way 

down and out. 

And anyone who thinks the party of Obama, Reid and Pelosi

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 whose 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 and 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, County and Municipal Employees

usually contribute to, work for, vote for?

At which of the two party conventions 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 an average of 

$10,000 more a year in pay and benefits than the

average American worker who is bailing them out.

Hence, we have a situation where private-sector workers

in Middle America are being taxed, their children driven

deeper into debt 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 that 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 populations

over 1 million  saw "net earnings and the broader

measure of personal income both rise".

Are you surprised to learn that Washington D.C.

is #1 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 earned $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 all of this Obama's doing. For most of the

fat years of the federal work force came while

Washington was being run by 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 government employees

vote Democratic, as do the vast majority of the

scores of millions of beneficiaries of federal, state,

and local programs.

What Pelosi and Co. were saying with the $26

billion bailout was "We are going to protect

our own".

Which is why either Obama, Reid, Pelosi and 

Co. go, or we are Gone.