the jaw-dropping figure that we are being charged $500 million dollars a day for interest alone on the national debt. So in a week’s time, we rack up another 3.5 billion just in interest alone. And of course that figure grows again by the next week.

If a business ran this way, they’d have been closed down long since and the owners would have been jailed for so misusing the investors’ money.

and something that hasn’t really done yet.

Nothing irritates me more than to hear about the pay hikes the shlubs in congress give themselves. Well, that’s not entirely true. Also high on my peeve meter is all the federal employees trolling around the military bases my husband has SERVED on. The government matches their TSP savings (retirement savings), but they don’t do this for active duty. Maybe it’s just me, but if anyone should get this perk (and that is questionable) it should be the guys getting shot at.

Please know, I am very aware that my husband’s salary comes directly from the tax payer. But the tax payer would do well to know just how much of the Defense Budget goes toward paying over-paid civil service/federal employees. I don’t know much about how this whole thing works, but twenty years living on and around military bases has had me suspecting some palms are being greased. We could afford to have a more than adequate military force if we weeded out some of the higher-paid federal employees trolling around the military and give those jobs back to the (underpaid) active duty members.

Forgive my digression.

Bottom line: I agree.

We all know that “figures lie, and liars figure”. It is an “apples and oranges” (OK, enough of the cliches) comparison to compare the “average” salary of federal employees to private sector employees. How many burger flippers and french fry friers does the federal government employ? None, any working on federal property are employees of contractors. Same for janitorial services. And lots of other, relatively low paying, jobs. I depend on the Cato Institute for lots of things, but (as with all things) we have to make sure any comparisons are accurate. How about a comparison of the average of all jobs for which a college degree, or equivalent work experience, was required? That would be informative, and would exclude other jobs on both the private sector and government payrolls. Then another comparison could be made for jobs which have only a HS diploma as a requirement. And yet another where no educational achievement is required (though I’m not sure that many such jobs exist in the federal government).

Care to try again?

The problem has never been real conservatives, it’s been liberal democrats and self-righteous pragmatist RINOS like McCain, Snowe, Collins, Coburn, Grahm, and Specter who never turn down an opportunity to order extra dessert at the taxpayer dinner table.

This is why it’s so important to defeat liberals like Dede Scozzafava and Charlie Crist and keep them from waving our banner. Only through ideological purity can we cleanse ourselves of the stains of socialism incurred over the last 30 years of liberal spending.

Basically, the multigenerational plan would look something like this:

Some sort of tiered system where people below a certain age (say 35 or so) would have to continue paying SS without receiving benefits when they reach traditional eligible age, other people receive partial benefits until the age bracket of those currently 60 or so is reached, where they get full benefits when they get 65 (complicated, but the fairest scheme I can come up with given the stickiness of the issue).