David Karki

In the last 18 months, the number of federal government employees making $100,000 a year or more has exploded, despite the economic downturn that has seen private-sector unemployment reach double-digit figures. Per the USA Today, the Department of Transportation alone has gone from one six-figure salary to a staggering 1,690!

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Per the New York Times, state and local governments have added 110,000 jobs while the private sector has lost nearly 7 million. And again per USA Today, benefit packages for government employees at all levels grew at triple the rate of private sector workers.

In the states most on the brink of fiscal disaster, California and New York, government employee unions are the unelected fourth branch of government. They use the money they get to bribe politicians with campaign donations so as to keep the gravy train running on time, and should any dare to suggest that multi-billion (or at the federal level, multi-trillion) dollar deficits are a reason to cut back and stop this fiscally destructive incestuous relationship, they instantly scream like Chicken Little that the sky is falling and if that’s not enough, start threatening to take Louisville Sluggers to kneecaps.

In my home state of Minnesota, which is closely following in their footsteps, you have the laughable display of trying to close a $2 billion plus shortfall while declaring as a prerequisite that 75% of the budget is instantly sacrosanct and untouchable. What eats up that 75%? As you might have guessed: welfare, health care, and education. Or, more accurately described: Democratic (and some Republican) politicians buying lifetime re-election by stealing from the productive to bribe the votes of the parasitic by paying their bills for them.

It matters not which area of the budget that’s larded with waste, from lavish pension plans to luxury benefit plans that dwarf the private sector: the instant the recipients sniff the the tiniest possibility that their cushy living might be reduced in the slightest, they show up at a capitol building shrieking at how evil and cruel those are who would dare to suggest a thing, and promising retribution should it happen. (And in the case of education, unions eagerly and despicably using kids as political human shields.)

In this, they sound like nothing more than hardcore drug addicts who have just been cut off from their stash and begun experiencing the first pangs of severe withdrawal. Only in this case, the drug isn’t opium but OPM: Other People’s Money.

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You see, whether it’s because the productive population has had enough of subsidizing their lazier, greedier, unionized brethren, or whether the financial reality of incalculable debt (a reality that it appears incumbent politicians and government workers cannot accept) forces the issue, one way or another this overspending will end. It has to. It’s inevitable.

And when it does, when the hosts finally disengage the parasites, when the bloodsucking leeches are finally made to find sustanence on their own, it is not going to be pretty. Just as that cut-off drug addict lashes out at those who won’t let him feed his craving – even though they are doing it for his own good and he may well thank them once it’s all over, the addiction is broken, and he has the benefit of hindsight – so too will all the current overpaid, over-benefitted, entitlement-mentality addled unionized government employees spew hate at those who interrupted their comfortable dependent existence.

In fact, seeing as there are now so many under the aegis of government, we could well be looking at a second American Civil War: private sector versus public sector. And as with the first, it will split many families and neighborhoods down the middle, as people fall on opposite sides based on what personally benefits them and their wallets.

One reason it has gotten this far out of hand financially is because most of us haven’t had the stomach to say “no” and then make it stick, whatever it takes. The most important word any parent can say to their child is “No.” The same goes with the overgrown children that are politicians and government employees, as proven by the condescending elitist disdain shown by President Obama and others of his ilk when that word is used in their presence.

Far from hiding from the label “The Party of No,” Republicans must embrace it with gusto. And just as that parent of a spoiled child finds out, it would have been better had they used it sooner and more often when they had the chance. A big part of the reason we’ve reached this point where needed and overdue discipline will result in an ugly temper tantrum is because we’ve overindulged the children for far too long.

Thus far, the only weapons used in the first skirmishes of this nascent Civil War II have been words and intimidation. That’s but a tiny taste of what will be deployed when real hostilities break out. And break out they will – the only question is when and how intensely. It’s a mathematical certainty that this will stop, that this oversized and too-expensive government at all levels will inevitably shrink dramatically, if not outright collapse. But those in the public sector have no intention of ever accepting that truth.

Therefore, if we are to prevent that cataclysm which we know is coming in the only way it can be – by cutting government spending across the board, resulting in fewer government agencies, programs, employees, and lower salaries/benefits for all those that remain – we must be willing to wage civil war to get it. That’s what it will take, and what the rank and file of unionized public employees – or should I say foot soldiers in the bureaucrat army – will inevitably respond with in order to keep the current situation going in perpetuity, financial reality be damned.

If we’re not willing to fight it, then we’re accepting total insolvency and probably another sequel: The Second Great Depression.

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