By William Warren
As the national unemployment figures climbs to excruciatingly high levels, the American worker has been left grasping for some source of sustenance to alleviate the blistering heat of rising prices and evaporating jobs.
But, they’ll be happy to know that in Barack Obama’s oasis neighborhood, things are going swimmingly.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, Washington, D.C. is the perfect place to weather the current Barack Obama economic drought. As they point out:
“According to new data, [Washington, D.C.’s] unemployment rate dropped to 5.6% in April from 5.9% in March. This is the second consecutive month of improvement for Washingtonians, and it’s leagues from the national unemployment rate, which hit 9.4% in May.”
To the naysayers challenging this stat as a simple outlier, understand that the trend is not merely limited to the government haven of Washington, D.C. In fact, it can be observed on a national level as well—as the private sector suffers while the bureaucracy bloats.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, American private sector jobs fell from 145,993,000 to 140,570,000 from February 2008 to May 2009. Comparatively, government sector jobs rose from 22,368,000 to 22,628,000.
So while the private sector lost some 5.4 million jobs, the government oasis grew by about 300 thousand. The relationship between the two is becoming clearer by the day.
There is an obvious indirect correlation between government growth and private sector decline. As the former balloons, the latter is shoved by the wayside. In short, “make work” replaces real jobs.
Let’s lay it on the line: for a president promising equality, Barack Obama has delivered nothing of the sort. Washington, D.C. and the entire realm of government have become conveniently insulated from the ongoing Obama economic collapse. In fact, they’re profiting off of it.
As government spends and grows, the economy reels. As the economy reels, the government cries “financial emergency.” And it then spends and grows more.
This makes Barack Obama’s latest press conference—in which he promised a so-called fiscally responsible “pay as you go” principle to guide government spending—all the more absurd. Aptly taking this with a grain of salt, Joseph Curl writes in the Washington Times:
“Mr. Obama’s proposed budget would produce a $1.85 trillion deficit this year, more that four times the previous record set just last year by President George W. Bush, and $1.3 trillion next year. Over the next decade, the plan would incur $11.6 trillion in deficits – doubling the national debt, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.”
Mr. Curl might have added: And much of that deficit spending will go to pay government payrolls and reward those who produce nothing.
As usual, Barack Obama’s words and actions are completely mismatched. Barack Obama has no desire to exercise fiscal restraint because in doing so, government would require serious cutbacks. The delightful Big Government hedges of the Washington bureaucratic oasis would need a good trimming. And not by the means of the mere scalpel either. Not when we need a meat axe.
But, it will never happen. Not in Mr. Obama’s hallucinatory oasis. There in the Big Government’s model city, it is, indeed, “a wonderful day in the neighborhood.” Which means its hell to pay in the real world.
William Warren is a Contributing Editor of ALG News Bureau.