By Deroy Murdock
"I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of, you know, fat-cat bankers on Wall Street," President Barack Obama told CBS' "60 Minutes." He also has decried the "arrogance and greed" and "excess greed, excess compensation" of America's business executives.
Top Democrats like Obama constantly denounce private avarice. But when the fat cats are feds, not financiers, they go silent. To leading Democrats, government greed is good.
Just as Wall Street and corporate America relentlessly pursue profits, Congress and federal bureaucrats possess a ravenous hunger for trillions of tax dollars to fuel lavish spending schemes, underwrite gluttonous public salaries and benefits, and seize increasing power.
Post Bush-Rove Republicans should condemn government greed nonstop until Nov. 2 and then excise this cancer.
These days, the wallets of many American taxpayers feel like helium balloons. Yet Washington always wants more.
A post-election, Democrat-led, lame-duck congressional session may tax "the rich" ― specifically, individuals who earn north of $200,000 annually and married couples who make above $250,000.
If so, top tax rates would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. Remember: These disgusting plutocrats are expected to pay higher taxes and simultaneously hire the unemployed.
Furthermore, the capital gains tax could jump from 15 percent to 20 percent (rising to 23.8 percent in 2013, thanks to ObamaCare), and the dividends tax could soar from 15 percent to 39.6 percent. This also would snatch growth capital from the productive sector.
The Death Tax now dead could be resurrected at 55 percent on estates exceeding $1 million. If key Democrats prevail, they would slam this sickly economy with at least $678 billion in higher taxes, the National Taxpayers Union estimates.
Meanwhile, as Americans miss mortgage payments, shutter businesses and abandon their dreams, it's happy hour for government employees. What reformist Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey properly calls "shared sacrifice" means something completely different in Washington: The American people sacrifice, and the feds share in the proceeds.
As the Heritage Foundation calculates, between December 2007 (the start of the Great Recession) and July 2010, private-sector employment shrank by 7,837,000 positions, or 6.8 percent.
However, federal civilian employment grew by 198,000 positions, or 10 percent, not counting temporary Census workers. In 2009, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports, private-sector salaries and benefits averaged $61,051.
The federal-civilian figure? $123,049 ― more than double. Also, the Office of Personnel Management found that between December 2007 and June 2009, the number of federal employees earning at least $170,000 zoomed 93 percent.
As if devouring your money were not enough, Washington also sticks its collective snout everywhere. The feds have ordered New York City to change 250,900 street signs from ALL CAPS to caps and lower case, supposedly because "BROADWAY" is tougher to read than "Broadway."
Rather than invite D.C. to SHOVE IT, Mayor Michael Bloomberg rolled over and appropriated $27.6 million to obey Washington's latest edict. This sum could pay 219 rookie cops their $41,975 starting salaries for three years.
Washington dictates showerhead water pressure, limits the capacity of flush toilets and essentially will ban Edison-style light bulbs as of 2014.
Republicans should reject the Bush-Rove-Hastert era's despicable spendthriftness and instead boldly, loudly and consistently demand a federal hiring freeze and at least a 25 percent cut in the overall federal civilian payroll.
(While counter-terrorists should enjoy generous pay, the Agriculture Department's Director of the Executive Secretariat deserves no such mercy.)
If they secure Congress, Republicans should curb Washington's power lust by voting to repeal ObamaCare and, if that triggers a veto, defund it. A GOP Congress then should order Uncle Sam out of America's showers, lamps and commodes. And the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts should be made permanent so that this melancholy economy can sing again.
As Republicans apparently have remembered, government serves Americans, not the reverse. We the people should explain this to Washington Democrats, loudly and clearly, four Tuesdays hence.
Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. He can be reached at deroy.Murdock@gmail.com.