Bend This

Just over a week ago, President Obama scolded Republicans for trying to frighten Americans about the state of the economy. Yesterday, Obama told us that the U. S. will go bankrupt if we don't pass his healthcare legislation. Now who's trying (and succeeding I might add) to scare Americans? Hyperbole aside, America will not go bankrupt if Obamacare fails. On the contrary, its failure and the failure of all the other job killing programs the Obama team has in store for us just might keep us from economic collapse.

Obama continues to site the costs of healthcare as the straw that will break the collective backs of America. I believe, if anything, it will be the skyrocketing cost of government that has the real capacity to do so. Washington keeps talking about bending the cost curve of rising healthcare costs. Not only does Obamacare not do this, it looks as if it would succeed in doing the exact opposite. A cost curve that should immediately take a nosedive is one that looks more like a wall if plotted on a graph, and that is the recent explosion in federal payrolls.

In a USA Today report, the average pay of a federal job is now $71,206. The average pay in the private sector is $40,331. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot! In just two years, between 2007 and 2009, the number of employees at the Defense Department earning $150,000 or more, increased from 1,868 to over 10,000. The Department of Transportation had just one employee who made over $170,000 before the recession, now there are 1,690 who do. If these are the figures that the president uses when preparing remarks to the press then he may be right. Given the "Cadillac" healthcare benefits of federal employees on top of Wall Street-like salaries, this very well could bankrupt America.