Posted on 08/15/2002 6:35:28 AM PDT by End The Hypocrisy
Look at the size of that thing!
$6,164,529,911,859.03
SOURCE: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm
As the statistics on that website show, our national DEBT always GREW during the Clinton Administration, but some folks don't seem to [want to] realize that. Regardless, it's the world's largest national debt even though our economy's not that much larger than that of other debtor nations such as Japan and Germany (whose economies are stagnating like the USA's conceivably will once baby boomers start retiring in droves in half a decade).
Some questions arise:
*Is President Bush the ONLY one who is more or less fighting hard against increased congressional pork barrel spending recently?
*Why doesn't the [sponsorship-seeking and bureaucrats' newsleaks-craving] MEDIA pay more attention to the problem of our national DEBT, as opposed to the comparatively petty national DEFICIT problem [with which Clinton could actually score a few minor points]?
*Why has no major politician since apparently Ross Perot way back in 1992 tried hard to focus Americans' attention on our national DEBT problem?
*Unlike Spain, France and England, is the USA supposedly immuned to losing its own (fading?) status as a global power?
Perpetual pursuit of government reforms By: Linda Chavez
Al Gore tried it and failed. Ronald Reagan had some modest success when he attempted it. Even Jimmy Carter gave it a shot. Now President Bush is trying his hand at reforming the federal government. Let's hope he has more luck than his predecessors did. Mr. Gore tried to "reinvent government." Mr. Reagan's Grace Commission pledged to eliminate "waste, fraud and abuse." And Mr. Carter introduced "zero-based budgeting" for federal agencies to try to reduce the size of government. Despite their efforts, the size of the federal work force grew, but productivity didn't. Now Mr. Bush wants to cut the work force and improve productivity. Good luck.
The president's plan, announced during his weekly radio address, would create incentives for some current federal employees to take early retirement, out-source more jobs to contractors and base pay increases on performance rather than longevity, allowing managers to reward the best workers. If enacted -- and it will not be an easy task, especially with government employee unions fighting reform every step of the way -- the Bush plan could save a bundle.
The president complained that the federal government spends $45 billion a year on computers and technology, a huge sum, but "unlike private sector companies, this large investment has not cut the government's costs or improved people's lives in any way that we can measure." It's no wonder why. The problem isn't lack of equipment, it's the people who are expected to use it. I've worked in government and headed two federal agencies during my career and still have many friends in government. I've encountered bright, dedicated federal workers over the years -- but unfortunately, I've encountered almost as many incompetent and just plain lazy federal employees as well.
Back in the days before voice mail, I had a secretary who refused to answer the phone. She'd let it ring 10 or 12 times, lift the receiver off the cradle and drop it back down again, disconnecting the caller. And this was in the congressional liaison office of the then Department of Health, Education and Welfare. This same woman filed a grievance against me when I asked that all members of Congress receive a response to their letters within two weeks.
When I was head of the Civil Rights Commission, I had a secretary who could barely speak English, much less read or write it well. Her job was to type the annual report to Congress on the commission's activities. When I discovered that much of the typed report was gibberish -- she didn't know what she was typing, they were just sequences of letters -- I offered to send her to classes to improve her English. That offer prompted a visit from the agency's solicitor, warning me that I shouldn't even suggest such a thing and certainly could not force her to take lessons. Another woman in the agency -- a division manager -- would invite her assistant into her office every afternoon at 3 p.m. to play "Boggle," a board game involving dice the two would play noisily until quitting time. Now, federal employees can play computer games or surf the Internet to their heart's content all day long. I estimate that about a third of the federal employees I worked with were hard-working, another third were competent but lacked initiative, and fully one third were unable or unwilling to do their jobs. The problem is, there's almost no way under the current system to adequately reward the first group or get rid of the last. Mr. Bush's proposal attempts to deal with this problem, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. If we want accountability from federal employees, we've got to overhaul the entire system. It means getting rid of job protection for federal employees.
If an employee doesn't perform, there's no reason to keep him. If a program is reduced or eliminated, the staff should be cut accordingly, not just reshuffled within the agency.
If the government could hire and fire like much of the private sector does, agencies could do with fewer employees -- and afford to compensate the best ones commensurate with their talent. But don't count on it happening anytime soon.
-Linda Chavez is a nationally syndicated columnist
If we never pay it down, how does it mathmatically NOT get larger. This guy could make this statement every minute and it'd be freshly new and correct each time he said it.
But the Congress just rewarded all of them with a 4.1% COLA, when the cost of living, as measured by the CPI, is virtually flat.
Well put. I just want to see some of our debt to these private bankers forgiven, just as we perpetually forgive those debts from other nations (at taxpayer expense, yet again). For every $3 we forgive others, we could/should forgive ourselves just $1. That would take care of multiple billions of dollars every year... enough to pay the interest on the debt, at least!
Excerpt from NEALZ NEWS.
http://boortz.com/nealznuz.htm
WONDER WHERE THESE TWO CHARACTERS WERE EDUCATED This book you see on the left here is “The New Big Book of U.S. Presidents.” It was written by government school textbook authors Todd Davis and Marc Frey. An alert listener gave me a heads up on an interesting line in the section on George Bush the First. The sentence reads: , "Because the government spent more money than it earned, the U.S. Economy began to slump in the early 1990s." “Earned?” What’s this “earned” thing? Now we’re teaching our children in our illustrious government schools that the government “earns” the money it spends? News Flash. Share this with those children you’ve sent off to the government to be educated. Government doesn’t EARN money. Government SEIZES money. Government seizes money from the people who actually did earn it. Government cannot spend one single dollar on any spending program, bet it legitimate or not, without first seizing that dollar from the person who earned it. And … one final point. That money is seized at the point of a gun. You refuse to turn the money over – and the government resorts to force --- deadly, if need be. “Earned” Just another part of the indoctrination process.
Sorry, our economy is much larger than Japan's or Germany's. It is slightly smaller, however, than the EU's.
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