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Every week in the Going Postal section ITHP will nominate an individual who represents the scum of this planet.(Previous Weeks)

This Week: Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget

"This delicate, aristocratic-featured gentleman was a dummy director and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans."
     -Jack London

There are certain enlightened people among us who feel the best way to save our country from bankruptcy is to triple the federal budget deficit in a single year.  Peter Orszag is one of these chosen few.  Barack Obama recently said that in order to promote peace in the world, we have to continue bombing the Middle East.  Similarly, Orszag says in order to make our country solvent again, we need to spend trillions on healthcare, “stimulus” packages, bailouts, etc.  Does anyone take this guy seriously? Is there not one voice of reason on Obama’s economic advisory board who has brought up the fact that maybe all this spending is crowding out private investment, ultimately leading to much lower future growth rates and higher taxes?

It was recently reported that despite double-digit unemployment and significant downward pressure on wages, federal employees are getting pay raises.  The USA Today writes, “Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.”  But that makes perfect sense if you’re Peter Orszag.  In order to create more jobs and reduce unemployment, lets dump money on the bureaucrats.

Orszag and the Obama white house argue this massive increase in spending is temporary, and they promise to cut spending once the economy recovers.  Even if you buy into this faulty economic policy, I don’t see how spending can be significantly reduced.  The defense contractors have imbedded themselves so deeply into the fabric of our government that the defense budget is never going to get cut as long as we remain in a perpetual state of war. 

Additionally, as Orszag continues to advocate government spending bills, more and more people are becoming dependent on government salaries to feed their families. Officially, the government employs around two million people according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.  But this excludes the Post Office, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Imagery and Mapping Agency.  The actual number is probably closer to five million.  Any major spending cuts are going to result in large job losses.  For some reason, I don’t think this administration has the backbone to institute the massive spending cut we desperately need.

At best, our country for the past twenty years has been run by statists and short sighted politicians who believe in growing government, and recklessly spending money to get reelected and usurp power.  At worst, there is a plan in place to bankrupt the United States and usher in a new era of global authoritarian rule in its place.  Thanks to Peter Orszag, we are moving closer to this reality.