I’ve started writing a regular column at the newly-expanded American Issues Project site. My first column is about the one constituency that seems to be skating past the current economic downturn: government workers.

While private sector employees are dealing with layoffs, threats of layoffs, loss of savings (especially retirement savings), downward wage pressure, and the promise of higher taxes, government workers are doing relatively well. Government is expanding and government wages are increasing - at precisely the time the private economy is hardest-pressed to support its inefficiencies. Government workers basically enjoy lifetime job security and the knowledge that their wages and benefits will generally do nothing but increase. There is a fundamental unfairness here:

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Timothy Geithner, President Obama’s tax cheat Treasury Secretary, doesn’t pay attention to his facts any better than he pays his taxes.

The Associated Press reports Geithner claims Obama has inherited “the worst fiscal situation in American history.”

The facts disprove Geithner’s statement. The January unemployment rate was 7.6%. The revised gross domestic product showed economic activity declined at a 6.2% annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2008. Those two statistics demonstrate that far from being the worst in history, this recession still isn’t as bad as 1982 recession which saw  10.8 % unemployment and a 6.4% decline in GDP. 

Secretary Geithner also tried to justify Obama’s borrow and tax spending orgy by falsely asserting President Bush “was unwilling to make long-term investments in health care, energy and education.”

Perhaps Geithner doesn’t remember President Bush’s prescription drug program. Perhaps Geithner doesn’t  remember President Bush’s advanced energy initiative, with increased funding for clean coal technologies, solar power, wind power, ethanol - including cellulosic ethanol, plug-in hybrids and fuel cell vehicles. Perhaps Geithner doesn’t remember that federal education spending grew dramatically under President Bush. 

Maybe Geithner conveniently forgot about these facts like he, and so many other Obama appointees, conveniently forgot to pay their taxes.