-By Warner Todd Huston
One of Trump’s biggest problems is the thousands of Obama toadies still infesting the federal government both in Washington and in government offices elsewhere. Because of this, the real era of Trump can’t take effect. Until these nests of insurrection are cleaned out, Trump won’t be able to fully implement his agenda. What I am saying is that if you work for the federal government, you need to be fired.
Over the last two months we have seen more leaks coming out of the deep state, left-wing, money wasting federal government than we’ve ever seen in American history and it’s all aimed at destroying Trump and preventing him from cutting down the un-American administrative state. If it wasn’t clear before it is now; the federal government needs to be slashed to the bone.
Why are these deep state government employees doing this? For no other reason than to protect their undeserved jobs, their unelected power, and their rich pensions all at the expense of you and me, the U.S. taxpayer. Like thieves, they want to make sure they can continue their grift to our detriment.
As conservatives, we are used to advocating to “vote them all out of office.” We are also fond of saying we want that agency or this agency to be closed down. But in all the years that conservatives have been espousing this goal, there has never been any real movement in that direction. Until, that is, Donald J. Trump entered the White House.
Not only do we have a president who is used to the logical business practice of firing people who aren’t performing to expectations, but we also have advising him Stephen Bannon, a man whose stated goal has for years been to disempower the administrative state that oppresses this nation.
So, we live in an exciting time for small government conservatism. As conservatives we should now be taking up the call to fire every government worker from the smallest village receptionist or sewer worker to the staffers of the highest Senator and every menial clerk and recalcitrant paper shuffler in between.
I recognize that we won’t get that out come and that we do need some government workers, granted. But we need to drive the discussion to the most desired end instead of hedging for “reasonable” cuts. Why? Because in Washington, “reasonable” cuts are never cuts at all.
Donald Trump knows well the art of the deal. As a movement, we need to learn it too. Come to the table with your dearest wishes right up front and negotiate from there. Don’t come to the table with 1/4 of a loaf to be “reasonable” and then negotiate half of that away just to “get a deal.”
I am not just railing at the famously lazy government worker here. It’s also not just that many government workers are better paid than just about any real American in the private sector — whether they deserve it or not. It’s not because they are often impossible to fire, nor is it because they get a better pension and more comprehensive health care than anyone who really contributes to society… our campaign to fire every government worker is all that, yes, but it is far, far more.
One example of how pernicious government employment has become is reflected in an editorial once published by Investor’s Business Daily titled “The New Beltway Babylon.” This piece reported that Washington D.C. had replaced Silicon Valley and even New York as the center of affluence in the U.S.A.
How can the seat of government in a capitalist society double as its seat of wealth? The late Milton Friedman, who warned about the growing mix of government in the U.S. economy, must be turning in his grave.
According to the Census Bureau, the nation’s three richest counties — and half the top 10 — are now all located near Washington, where they gorge on the tax dollars you send there.
This is no less than an affront to true American principles.
At the time IBD pegged this rise in affluence in the area surrounding D.C. to government contracts created by defense and Homeland Security programs bringing in people to fulfill those needs. But, it is surely a larger problem than just the temporary need for Homeland security programs. The problem is more widespread than that.
To start with, government workers make up the single biggest segment of unionized labor in the U.S. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, “The union membership rate for government workers (36.2 percent) was substantially higher than for private industry workers (7.4 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 41.9 percent.” The National Center for Policy Analysis finds those stats alarming. “The nation’s 16 million state and local government workers form a large, growing, and well-compensated class in society,” the report found before going on to say, “State and local workers earned $36 per hour in wages and benefits in 2005, on average, compared to $24 per hour for U.S. private-sector workers…”
It is disgusting that these government leeches make more on average than a private sector worker. It is also unsustainable.
Not only is it unsustainable, these workers are unaccountable. These people, regardless of how well or how badly they do their jobs — regardless of whether their jobs are even necessary — are too often unable to be fired due to their ironclad union contracts the tax payers are duped into paying for. Worse, these people’s retirement at such cushy levels that are far and away better than that of the private sector are endemic. To compound that, the courts often back these backstabbing union thugs over what is best for the American people.
As USA Today reported in 2007, “Retired government workers are twice as likely to get a pension as their counterparts in the private sector, and the typical benefit is far more generous. The nation’s 6 million retired civil servants … received a median benefit of $17,640 in 2005… Eleven million private-sector retirees covered by traditional pensions got $7,692.”
Naturally, we can’t begrudge benefits to certain government workers worthy of receiving them. Teachers, Policemen, Firemen, and Military personnel deserve benefits as they provide a professional, sometimes dangerous and necessary service — As with everything there are exceptions that prove the rule.
But, why should a perfunctory paper pusher at the State Department get a better pension than anyone in the private sector? Worse, how can we stand by and allow government workers to retire at much younger ages than those in the private sector, forcing tax payers to pay their exorbitant health care benefits and cushy, undeserved pensions for many more years than private sector workers ever get theirs?
And how can we be so stupid as to allow government workers to become a larger force every year adding insult to injury?
Even when we vote out a member of Congress, for instance, we are not cleaning house. Staffers often stay on from one Senator or House member to another because of their so-called “expertise” in the inner workings of government. This adds to government inertia. After all, what staffer is going to do much that would annoy the go-along-to-get-along backroom workings that might upset their apple cart. This also adds to the cost of government.
The fact that government workers have the best jobs, the safest jobs, the highest paying jobs, and the best retirement plans is al so thoroughly un-American. In fact, the founders worried about this very thing befalling their new nation.
During the Constitutional Convention, several of the founders talked* about what they then called “pensioners and placemen” — how government workers were described at the time. These “placemen” were hangers on, people that were leaching off the people’s taxes. These placemen were a feature of the British system, too, and they were inveighed against as evidence of the corruption of the British system. These placemen were something that the founders wanted to avoid in the United States of America.
This subject was a matter of much worry by James Madison as he criticized Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, you see, was keen to replicate the British system here in America (it should be remembered that the founders initially insisted that they were being more British than the British by more closely following Britishness). Madison, on the other hand, was just as keen to avoid the sort of ministerial corruption that heavily invested government workers could wreck on America. Madison thought that public pensioners, placemen, dealers in public funds, and influence peddlers would doom this country to rule by regulators and bureaucrats.
Madison was exactly right. It may have taken more than 200 years to prove his prescient warning correct but it has been proven, nonetheless.
So, let’s do something about this. No government worker should ever qualify for a pension or post employment health care. Their unions are unconstitutional anyway, so let’s get rid of those, too. I include all elected members of government under that umbrella, by the way.
We need to make government jobs less desirable than they now are, not the plum positions of the entire American work force. It is a crime that, in a supposedly capitalist society, working for the government is more lucrative than working for the private sector.
All this, though, is the result of creating the Frankenstein’s monster of a bloated, big government, nanny state. We have allowed it to grow beyond control and some efforts to curb it must be taken before it overwhelms us. With Trump we have a meaningful chance to do this. We should push to fulfill that promise.
Lastly, Mr. government worker, before you get into your high dudgeon, before you warm that computer up to write me to ask if I think it’s fair that you should have your benefits cut, let me assure you of something. I am not just asking you to suffer a cut in your benefits… I want you to lose both your job AND your benefits. I want you out of government never to return. And I want your jobs entirely eliminated.
I am saying you are a problem, not a solution. So, please, for the sake of our country, go find a real job and get out of government, you lazy slob.
* This discussion can be found in James Madison’s Journal of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in conversations between Oliver Ellsworth and Elbridge Gerry.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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