In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
The Looting of America
Bill Clinton: The Era of Big Government is over!
George W. Bush: No it Aints!
Report Finds Size Of Government Up Sharply Under Bush
The Bush Administration has brought the era of big government back, say a Brookings Institution scholar and a growing number of conservatives dismayed about such growth under the Republicans' watch.
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reports:
"While the number of official government employees declined slightly after President Bush took office, the Brookings study to be released Friday finds the number of full-time employees working on government contracts and grants has zoomed by more than one million people since 1999, bringing the overall head count to more than 12.1 million as of this past October."
The "eight-page report is likely to fuel debate about the administration's approach, at a time when budget deficits are ballooning and Mr. Bush is pressuring Democrats to hold down federal spending." The report "finds that the growth is happening entirely outside traditional civil-service hiring channels.
'The Bush administration is overseeing a vast expansion of the largely hidden federal work force of contractors and grantees,' according to the report, written by Paul Light, who directs the Center for Public Service at Brookings, a nonpartisan think tank."
Privatization means many things to many people. To George Bush it means: Taking money from governmental control to private control. Bush is not moving control of our nations bureaucracy to private concerns for reasons of efficiency and savings (two lofty goals), but for the sole reason of removing congressional oversight on said bureaucracy. Your money is being taken from a public employee, that in the end is overseen by an elected official whom (supposedly) represents you, to a private employee in a corporation that is not beholden to anyone. If things look bad for the private concern (complaints, missing funds, and what not) they’ll just need to increase their campaign contributions, that’s all. Bush has made much of our government more faceless and unaccountable than before while proposing the opposite. Your money has moved from control of your elected official to the control of Bush’s campaign donors and friends.
If you want to see real looting, don’t look to Iraq. The out-right theft is happening down in Washington.
- rob 6:16 PM - [PermaLink] -
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