No Wonder We’re a Broke and Dying Nation

Posted by Tina

During the 2008 election cycle Michelle Obama said that young people should avoid the private sector and go straight into public service. Her advice bothered me for several reasons. First of all she spoke about the private sector, and specifically corporate America, as if working and making money there was somehow dishonorable. Second, she spoke of “service” employment …mostly working for the government…as a much higher and worthy calling. Finally it bothered me that this supposedly well-educated woman seemed to have no idea how the money to fund the salaries and benefits of these servants of the people makes it’s way into government coffers. Her lack of appreciation for corporate America and private sector work means that she operates in a dream world of abundance born of want rather than enterprise or work.

Michelle Obama’s words returned to me today as I was reading the Wall Street Journal article, “We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers,” by Stephen Moore wherein he describes the size of the American bureaucracy:

If you want to understand better why so many states–from New York to Wisconsin to California–are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

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Michelle Obama seems like a nice woman. She certainly seems to care deeply, not only about her own children, but about children all across our nation. I’m sure she meant her remarks to be of help to young people. But this well meaning woman, like so many others in our nation, has no idea what her formula would mean in terms of the greater American picture. If large numbers of young people follow her advice and hang their hats on government jobs there will not be a wealth building base big enough to support them.

The President, for his part, is doing his best to further this failed formula; government has grown by leaps and bounds under his watch.

The Heritage Foundation:

Since President Barack Obama was sworn into office, the private sector workforce has shrunk by 2.6% while shedding 2.9 million jobs while the federal workforce (excluding Census and Postal workers) has grown by 7% while adding more than 144,000 jobs.

Now, President Obama’s FY 2012 budget proposes adding even more people to the federal payroll. Specifically, the President wants to create an additional 15,000 federal government jobs including 4,182 additional Internal Revenue Service employees 1,054 of which will be needed to implement Obamacare alone.

If America, and indeed each and every state, is to survive we must quickly reverse this trend and adopt policies that will encourage and support the private sector and its workforce. It is in the private sector that wealth is made and wealth and abundance is needed to fuel our entire nation, both public and private. We must also find the courage to cut wasteful, redundant government spending. This process and adjustment will no doubt be painful and a bit messy but it absolutely must be done…and there is hope on the horizon.

While concerned citizens ponder and debate the piddling cuts included in the next Continuing Resolution for 2011 a few Republicans have been hard at work putting together a proposal that should rock the very foundations of our big government bureaucracy. Peter Wehner of Commentary writes:

Next week Representative Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, will release the GOP House budget for FY 2012. It’s likely to include far-reaching tax and entitlement reforms, significant cuts in domestic discretionary spending, spending caps, the rollback of injurious laws, and more. We’re talking about savings of more than $2 trillion over the next decade. If that’s the case – and we’ll know by early next week – it will rank as arguably the best, most important policy document produced by any Congress in our lifetime.

Remember, too, that based on the actions they have taken on the CR, Congressional Republicans will already have cut some $100 billion in the short term (returning discretionary spending to pre-stimulus levels), as well as several hundred billion dollars over the next decade.

Mathew Continetti of The Weekly Standard writes about Ryan’s proposal this way:

The Ryan budget will include significant cuts to domestic discretionary spending. But more fundamentally, it will reform Medicaid into block grants to states to give governors maximum flexibility. It will transform Medicare into a defined contribution program that will be stable for decades to come. And it will propose fundamental tax reform to remove loopholes and increase efficiency and spur economic growth. This is a comprehensive strategy that, over the long term, will reduce spending not by billions but by trillions of dollars.

Nor will this budget be of interest to actuaries alone. Behind the Ryan policy is a realistic vision for conservative governance. The budget accepts the fact of the modern welfare state while targeting aid to the truly needy and refashioning programs in ways that encourage thrift, competition, and self-reliance. The goal is a solvent federal government that pays its bills and performs its limited functions with energy and competence. The Ryan budget also prepares the ground for political battles in 2012 and beyond: The contrast with the liberal Democratic vision of an ever-expanding administrative state that taxes, spends, and regulates an increasingly dependent and indebted America couldn’t be clearer

Both my fingers and toes remain crossed. The biggest question is whether Americans have the will to get this done in the current Congress. Can we count on the masses to act in their own best interests bringing pressure to bear on our legislators? Or are too many of us now emotionally and intellectually tied to the dependency model that promised cures for poverty and want but delivered greater dependency and spawned a bureaucratic monster? The next few months will give us some idea.

We are a broke and dying nation but it’s not yet too late to revive ourselves and do the work necessary to restore our beloved country. We share in a strong and powerful heritage of self-reliance, innovation and grit. In the last sixty or so years we tried the socialist experiment. I can’t think of a better time to dramatically throw it off and begin to walk again with a newfound embrace of the American can do spirit.