“Federal government” on The Daily Caller

The American public’s dependency on government programs jumped almost 25 percent since 2005, according to a study released Wednesday by The Heritage Foundation, which found that roughly 67 million Americans now depend on government programs. (more)

Rick Perry wants to be unimportant. The Texas governor has famously promised that, if he is elected president of the United States, he will “work hard every day to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as [he] can.” In Austin recently, he gave a few of us some details as to how that shakes out. (more)

If this is victory, I’d hate to see defeat. (more)

Washington vs. America–D.C. doesn’t doesn’t act like there’s a deficit problem: If you worry that the federal government can’t afford $38 billion in cuts, please read Chris Moody’s article from two weeks ago. There’s a $1.6 trillion deficit but the feds are still hiring. As of March 23 they were hiring someone to run a Facebook page for the Deparment of the Interior (at up to $115,000 a year). They were hiring equal opportunity compliance officers at the Peace Corps and Department of Interior for $150,000 to $180,000 a pop. They were hiring deputy speechwriters for officials at relatively obscure agencies. …P.S.: The point isn’t so much that these federal employees are overpaid, though they are. The point is that if there were any actual sense of a deficit crisis in Washington these are jobs that would not be filled at all. … Well, maybe the Facebook editor. I think that’s a critical investment necessary to win the future, don’t you? …  P.P.S.: That’s what’s so annoying about all the calls from respectable Beltwayish opinion leaders to stop cutting the non-defense discretionary budget and focus on entitlements, because ‘that’s where the big money is.’ From one perspective, this is a rational argument. That is where the big money is. From another perspective, it looks like a tacit conspiracy of Washingtonians not to sacrifice the jobs of any of their friends, or the local economy, by any kind of actual slimming down (of the sort a private company in similar straits would have undertaken years ago).  … In effect, the respectable ”pivot to entitlements” position says,”we’re going to cut Social Security checks and Medicare for mid-income old people to save the jobs of $180K equal opportunity officers at the DOT.” … Why not wring the fat out of government first? … Update: Here’s the current list of jobs the government is still filling. … (more)

The federal government has a very serious addiction to spending. It’s not a Republican problem or a Democrat problem — it’s an American problem. This spending addiction is dangerous and has contributed to one of the worst recessions of our lifetime. House Republicans are breaking the addiction by proposing important spending cuts in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget proposal. (more)

As Democrats and Republicans look for spending cuts in their latest discussions to fund the federal government for the rest of the year, the Rural Utilities Service’s (RUS) Rural Broadband Access Loan and Loan Guarantee Program should be at the top of the list. (more)

If you’re one of the millions of Americans still looking for a job, the federal government is hiring, and (especially for the unemployed) the pay is excellent. While private sector job growth creeps along at a snail’s pace, the roster of available federal jobs is booming. (more)

John’s Assignment Desk: John Rosenberg suggests that some enterprising journalist or graduate student add up the cost of the federal government’s redundant affirmative action and civil rights bureaucracy. Good idea. I would think it’s quite expensive–don’t lots of government agencies have little non-essential offices dedicated to “equal employment opportunity”? Rosenberg suggests we let a mere two agencies–DOJ and EEOC –do the job. … (more)

The other day, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote a column in which he posed the question, “What if we’re not broke?” Dionne concluded that we’re not actually broke and that “a phony metaphor [the idea that we’re broke] is being used to hijack the nation’s political conversation and skew public policies to benefit better-off Americans and hurt most others.” (more)

While the Department of Education continues its crackdown on mean-spirited taunting on Facebook, some members of Congress are joining the fight in Washington’s War on Bullying with a new bill aimed directly at kids who target students with disabilities. (more)

A just-released study from the Government Accountability Office uncovers massive duplication in federal government programs. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) estimates that the resulting waste costs taxpayers more than $100 billion a year. (more)

If you’re collecting a federal paycheck, you should pay federal taxes. That’s the premise of a bill I introduced last week to require federal employees to pay their taxes or be fired. (more)

Faced with the threat of losing funding from the federal government, National Public Radio (NPR) CEO Vivian Schiller defended the news outlet’s use of taxpayer money in a speech Monday, and brushed off criticism of bias as “perception.” (more)

Over the past couple of years, the federal government has spent well north of $1 trillion in a failed effort to stimulate the economy and create jobs. President Obama assured us that, if we spent all that borrowed and printed money, the unemployment rate would remain below 8% or so. (more)

The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion, according to preliminary numbers the Congressional Budget Office released Monday morning. (more)

Bureaucracy is the air that gives life to Big Government. In its absence, Big Government cannot survive to coerce people to purchase a specific kind of light bulb or tell them what kind of car to buy. The Big Government trend in America poses significant threats to our fiscal solvency and the preservation of liberty. As our country moves closer to bankruptcy, the only chance we have at balancing our budget is to make substantial cuts to the ever-expanding bureaucracy. (more)

Senate Democrats on Friday introduced their plan for keeping the federal government funded through September, with a vote on the measure as well as a House-passed proposal expected to come as early as next Tuesday. (more)

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are collaborating on legislation to require the federal government to make public how much it pays doctors who participate in Medicare, a Senate staffer said. (more)

The inadvertent byproduct of a government shutdown is that it lets Americans in on a secret — they can do without many federal employees, at least for a short period of time. (more)

In our home, conversations about the family budget take place around the kitchen table. It’s a little bit small for a battlefield, but talking about income and spending still can be, well, tense at times. (more)