“So be it.”
Those three words, uttered by House Speaker John Boehner
last week about the prospect of federal work force layoffs,
generated a firestorm of anger and anxiety among congressional
Democrats, liberals, federal workers (and federal
nonworkers in no small number of cases, considering the
absence of output) and various other advocates of ever-expanding
government.
The House speaker’s answer came in response to a question
from Pacifica Radio’s Leigh Ann Caldwell.
“Do you have any estimate on how many jobs will be lost
through this?” she asked, referring to the impact on government
payrolls of the Republican majority’s plans to reduce Washington’s
record levels of red ink by cutting federal spending by billions of
dollars.
Boehner’s reply: “Since President Obama has taken office,
the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs, and if
some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it. We’re
broke.”
As a footnote, Pacifica Radio describes itself as
“America’s progressive news source.” Its idea of good programming
is putting folk singer Pete Seeger on the air every Fourth of July
to talk about his father’s communist ideology, just so listeners
don’t get too patriotic about America’s founding and
exceptionalism: “In those early days, he linked up with the
communist movement. They had a thing called the Composers’
Collective. After all, in Russia they had collectives this and
collectives that. And there, they decided, as skilled musicians,
they would compose the new music for a new society.”
I don’t think there were any follow-up programs to explain
how the massacres, terror, torture, jailing, executions, famines
and mass deportations utilized by the communists to bring about the
forced collectivization of the “new society” resulted in the deaths
of between 85 million and 100 million people — victims killed by
their own governments (see The Black Book of Communism,
Harvard University Press, for an accounting).
In any case, Boehner is simply attempting to deal with
out-of-control Washington spending — projected multitrillion
dollar deficits, an accumulated federal debt of $14 trillion (and
another $12 trillion projected to be added over the next decade),
and budget plans from the Obama administration that fall
drastically short of even putting a dent in the deficits and
debt.
Mr. Obama’s current budget proposal, for instance,
includes a well-publicized “spending freeze,” but the freeze
applies to only 12 percent of the budget — freezing operations at
their current deficit-producing and bloated levels and leaving the
remaining 88 percent of the budget free to fly.
For this year, Obama’s budget projects spending of $3.8
trillion and incoming revenues of $2.1 trillion, producing a
deficit of $1.7 trillion.
Do the math and it’s clear that these massive and
unprecedented flows of red ink are simply not sustainable. The
current $14 trillion federal debt averages out to $45,957 per
American — $183,828 for a family of four.
With only half of U.S. households paying federal income
taxes, double that $183,828 for the half that’s picking up the tab
and the debt equals $367,656 per taxpaying household.
Double again to account for the $12 trillion to $14
trillion in Obama’s projected new federal debt over the next decade
and the cost climbs to an average of $735,312 per household paying
federal income taxes.
Increase the Chinese interest rate on that growing stack
of debt and double the price of Saudi oil and we’ll be working for
nothing, firmly stuck over two barrels.
And we’re not supposed to say we can’t afford 200,000 new
federal workers, or 200,000 more nonworkers? “So be it” is
language that’s too much — too rough, too uncivil — for some
people to hear? We’re supposed to drown quietly in the red ink,
with unfaltering civility?
