Orszag strikes out as Social Security goes bankrupt

Before he came to Obama's Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag used to work for the Congressional Budget Office. While there, Orszag warned that Social Security would start running deficits in 2019 unless the system is reformed. Orszag was off by about 3,285 days. The New York Times is reporting that as of today, Social Security is officially producing red ink.

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.

With the Obama Administration having done nothing to help create jobs, somewhere near 20% of the country is estimated to be unemployed or underemployed. Those people are paying little to nothing to the Social Security Administration, which has rapidly accelerated its collapse. Turns out you actually need people to be productive in order to tax them. And with the economy already teetering on top of massive debt and a $1 trillion health care bill on the way, Social Security recipients will find there isn't very much money left to go around. The program could go bust any day at this point.

The same CBO that miscalculated Social Security's red ink by nine years also claimed the health care bill would reduce the deficit. Its former oracle, Orszag, now has the president's ear on all budget matters.

Peter Orszag says federal employees aren't overpaid

Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, defended federal employees' salaries yesterday.

"I think the key thing to remember about that is the federal workforce is more highly educated than the private workforce," Orszag said. "Roughly a third of the private workforce has a college degree, for example, [while] well over 50 percent of the federal workforce [does]."

Orszag also noted that "as people gain more experience, pay tends to increase," and the federal government has a highly experienced workforce. "Basically the entire delta between private sector and public sector federal government average pay can be explained by education and experience," he said.

Orszag was responding to a spate of newspaper articles showing that government workers made more than private sector employees. But his analysis is dishonest, as this report from USA Today shows.

Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.

These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

For the same jobs with the same education level, government workers still take in almost $8,000 more than private sector workers. And that disparity is actually much higher if you take into account benefits. And as anyone who knows anyone who works for the government will tell you, public sector workers are promoted quickly even if they're doing very little work. Right now the government is looking is to hire up to 100,000 new employees, even as most businesses are laying people off and cutting salaries. And with Obama looking to expand the government as far as possible, that number could rise even higher.

Tax and spend Obama breaks yet another campaign promise

Back during the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that he would reduce the deficit to 3% of GDP by the end of his first term in office. It was a sham, of course. There's no way Obama, drunk on spending taxpayer money, would follow through on something like that.

Now it's official. Over the weekend, Obama announced his new $3.8 billion budget, which ramps up spending on all kinds of useless government programs. Meanwhile his Office of Management and Budget announced that the deficit would be reduced to a minimum 3.6%...by 2020. Right now, deficit spending is at its highest point since World War II, thanks to Obama.

Chicago politics even extends to the OMB

Under Barack Obama, brass-knuckled Chicago politics has pervaded the entire United States government. Now today comes word that the president's kneecapping tactics are in play even at the Office of Management and Budget, a relatively nonpartisan agency responsible for crafting the U.S. budget.

According to Office of Personnel Management Inspector General Patrick McFarland, on January 4, an official from the OPM was on the phone with a high-ranking OMB official. The OPM has the right to bring complaints and concerns about the budget to Congress. The official from the OMB warned the official from the OPM that, if he went to Congress about the 2011 budget, the OMB would "make life miserable" for the OPM. A House committee is now investigating the matter.

One can only imagine what sort of nefariousness in the president's 2011 budget has the OMB so worried.

Is there any department or agency that is safe from the president's Chicago brand of politics?