Speaker Boehner: "so be it" if Federal workers lose their jobs

President Obama's proposed budget doesn't cut deep enough for the GOP.  If the GOP gets their way with the austerity ax, the jobs of the Federal workforce are on the chopping block.  According to CNN, during a news conference today, Speaker of the House John Boehner said that,

"Over the last two years 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."

It would seem that Speaker Boehner and the GOP have declared war on Federal Workers.  Now this 200,000 new federal jobs number cited by Boehner seems like a lot and would lead you to believe that the Federal workforce is growing faster than the private sector.  But not so fast.  The folks over at Political Correction, a project of Media Matters, did some fact checking and found that Speaker Boehner's numbers don't jive.

Since President Obama took office, the Federal workforce has grown by 58,000.  Since Obama's economic policies have taken effect, it has only grown by 25,000 jobs.  This is all according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. 

Now to provide a little context, from December 2007 to July 2009 (the end of Bush's second term and the first six months of Obama's first term) the private sector lost 7,796,000 jobs.  The private sector went from 115,574,000 people in the workforce to 107,778,000 during that same period.  What this means is that during that same period government spending remained the same and tax revenue (income taxes, federal gas tax, etc.) fell as well.  When that happens, what do you get...?  Not just a Budget Deficit, but an exacerbated budget deficit.  This all gets added to the National Debt. 

In July of 2009, there were 107,649,000.  As of January 2011, there were 108,030,000 people in the private sector workforce.  That's an increase of 381,000 private sector jobs.  In the whole scheme of things, relatively flat job growth but still positive.  Keep in mind that the Federal Government added and shed thousands of temporary Census Worker jobs and still, there was only an increase of 25,000 federal jobs. 

In short, Mr. Speaker, you need to get your facts straight.  Also, don't be so quick to take the ax to the budget in the rush to austerity.  Take a look at how well taking the ax to the budget has worked in Britain.  According to an article on Salon.com by Andrew Leonard,

"Wasting no time, the new coalition U.K. government led by Prime Minister David Cameron, made a dramatic package of government spending cuts its first order of business. Many U.S. conservatives have looked with great longing at the austerity surge. The numbers are staggering -- an average 19 percent cut for all government departments, resulting in half a million public sector layoffs.

And look! Just as the Keynesians predicted, the economy immediately slumped, apparently proving that the last thing a government should do in a weak economic climate is suddenly kick the legs out of the demand side of the economy. It could happen here, Obama should argue! It's still too soon, and the U.S. economy is too fragile, to make austerity the watchword of the day."

This anit-worker, anti-government worker (at any level of government) attitude coming from the Speaker of the House is reckless, but more importantly its just disappointing.  Sure, there are lots of stories out there about government employees, at any level, that are caught in the act of being lazy or waisting tax payer dollars, but for the most part these are people that do their jobs and are good stewards of our tax monies.  I would wager to say that there's more waist from private sector employees than public sector.  The only difference is the public sector is under a much bigger microscope. 

Its a fact that the U.S. Federal government is the largest employer in the country.  You start cutting thousands, hundreds of thousands of government jobs it just might be a cut too deep.  The only saving grace is that Democrats control the Senate and the White House.  Does this mean a government shutdown is inevitable?  Not necessarily.  At this point, they're just a bunch of turkeys struttin' around, puffing up their chest to see who's the biggest, baddest turkey.  Oh well,...

GO HOKIES!