The Shutdown: A Blessing in Disguise

Did you notice the Federal government recently shut down? Just what does that mean? How many millions of employees are there in our national government?

Tired of all the hyperbola and conflicting and misleading information in the “mainstream media”, I went to that wellspring of all information, the Internet. Bad move! I couldn’t get a consistent or coherent answer there either. Does anybody even know how many people are employed with our tax dollars?

As near as I can tell, there are categories of employees in all three branches of government: full-time, part-time and contractors. The executive branch seems to have the most people, but then it also includes the Military and Post Office. There are also reports on how many employees are in the judicial branch. I couldn’t find any reports of how many legislative branch employees there are, though.

Adding to the confusion, there appears to be some game playing with how the employees are categorized and thus counted. Many reports show the employment in terms of the fiscal budget (October 1 to September 30), the latest of which is the fiscal 2012 budget. Other reports show the budget size of increase or decrease over time for each administration or budget adjusted for inflation, and other slight-of-hand accounting tricks.

Again, the unanswered question is, how many people are we paying for? If I could get a straight answer on that, my next question would be: what do they all do, of course followed by: are these people all necessary? Several reports show that only some three out of five government employees actually do any work.

Despite the hand wringing over the “sequester”, it proved that across-the-board cuts in budgets doesn’t seem to put a major crimp in operations. Without a functional 2013 budget, we are told the government shut down, but reports are that about 80% of the government is still working. As in the “sequester” scare, the administration targeted areas of the government that would be most noticeable; National Parks, passport services, and other often used departments. Still, we are merely inconvenienced, not in dire need or danger.

Many of the really non-essential governmental departments seem to be still operating -- the education department and the department of energy to name two. The CIA is still dropping off sacks of bribe money on Hamid Karzai’s desk and sending “aid” to Egypt. Although I have no actual way of knowing, I’m pretty sure the NSA is still eavesdropping on all of us. And just to rub salt in our fiscal wounds, Obamacare is charging full-speed ahead.

Just around the corner will be the fight to increase the national debt so Obama can pay for the 2013 budget items. The Democrats and Obama believe we don’t pay enough in taxes, yet they keep increasing the size of government then drive us deeper in debt to cover that increase. At what point does our country quit spending money it doesn’t have or declare bankruptcy?

When will the American public finally realize that the “sequester” and this “pseudo-shutdown” have actually shown that our government is bloated and we don’t really need all of these programs and employees that are driving us ever deeper in debt? Maybe then they will quit voting for tax/borrow-and-spend Democrats and RINOs, and we can finally put this country back on track to prosperity.