"A new analysis of federal workforce data shows that even in this time of retrenchment and downsizing, the federal government almost never fires or lays off workers.  In fact, in many corners of the federal government, it is virtually impossible for an employee to be fired. 'Federal employees' job security is so great that workers in many agencies are more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off or fired,' writes USA Today, which conducted the survey.

"The paper reports the federal government 'fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended September 30.'  For the private sector, the figure is about 3%.  And for some parts of the federal workforce, the firing rate was even lower.  For example, USA Today found that federal workers in the Washington, DC area have 99.74% job security.  Some agencies, like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, did not fire or lay off anyone in the last year."

"Remember pay-as-you-go legislation? Passed to offset the cost of increased spending and reduced revenues, it exists in name only to both parties. The so-called 'debt ceiling' is a similar abstraction. It reminds me of my biyearly 'weight ceiling' pledge -- as in, there is none. Any ceiling that is always raised and then set as some new arbitrary level that is negotiated solely by the ones who are borrowing ... well, that doesn't comport to any definition of 'limit.' That's a federal budget."

"The president, we are told, is a pragmatist for wanting a 'fair and balanced' budget deal. What that means is tax increases must accompany spending cuts. Any significant spending cuts would be way in the future. The tax increases would begin right after Obama is reelected. 

"Now keep in mind that tax hikes (or what the administration calls 'revenue increases') are Obama's idee fixe. He campaigned on raising taxes for millionaires and billionaires (defined in the small print as people making more than $200,000 a year or couples making $250,000)."

"Mainstream media have pummeled Republicans for pushing spending cuts and refusing to support tax increases in connection with raising the debt limit.

"But Republicans had a mandate from the voters in November 2010 to advance such policies. In contrast, it's not at all clear that voters in November 2008 gave Obama and the Democrats a mandate to increase non-defense discretionary spending by 24 percent (84 percent if you count the stimulus package) in 2009 and 2010.

"In negotiations on the debt limit, Obama has fenced off several programs from any cuts at all. One is Obamacare, even though majorities in polls continue to favor its repeal.

"Another is, astonishingly, the $53 billion he wants to spend on high-speed rail projects. To call high-speed rail a 'boondoggle,' as does House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, is to engage in considerable understatement."

"Whether or not he accepts this reality, Obama owns this economy and the alarming explosion of the debt in recent years. He is the one whose reckless policies have greatly exacerbated our dire financial condition. He is the one whose unconscionably wasteful and irresponsible economic policies have tanked the economy and suppressed employment. He is the one who, along with his party, has not presented a budget in 800 days. He is the one who formed a bipartisan deficit commission and then ignored its findings. He is the one who hasn't presented a concrete budgetary plan. He is the one who refuses to reform entitlements despite objective evidence that if we don't, the nation will go belly up. Yet he is the one who is pointing all the fingers of blame against the Republicans as if they were the culprits.

"Republicans, choose your spokesman (Rep. Paul Ryan would be a good choice), and call daily pressers to make your case instead of always ceding that turf to Obama. In charge of the purse, you have every bit as much right to speak out on fiscal matters as does Obama. Then begin passing your reform bills over and over again, forcing the Democratic Senate and Obama to reject them. It's time that the president and party who are "creating the mess" were put back on their heels and exposed for their wanton fiscal destruction."

"The president is now calling for a 'big' deal that would reduce the debt by $4 tillion over ten years, while we'll borrow more than a third of that this year. In fact, over those ten years, we are expected to run up more than $13 trillion in new debt.

"It's also important to remember that the president is not offering $4 trillion in spending cuts. The deal he has proposed includes more than $1 trillion in tax hikes. Another $1 trillion is assumed savings on interest payments. Thus, what is really on the table is barely $2 trillion in actual spending reductions. What the president is really offering is closer to $2 in spending reductions for every $1 in tax hikes, not the 4:1 ratio reported by the media. Moreover, that is over ten years, meaning the cuts would actually be just $200 billion per year. We will pay more than that this year in interest on what we have already borrowed."

"This is the 'nonpartisan' Washington narrative of the budget talks: Reasonable Obama vs. Dangerously Unhinged Republicans. The establishment is imbibing deeply of the David Plouffe spin that somehow, a reckless, unsupervised Congress spent all the money and Barack Obama was too busy golfing to notice, as if he didn't sign every spending bill. It's as if he didn't aggressively shovel Obamacare and almost a trillion dollars of 'stimulus' on top of the deficit mountain."

"It is becoming a verbal tic -- the tendency on the part of the president to tell wealthy Americans ('people like me' he's always careful to add) that they have made more than enough money and will have to cough up more of it for the government. Speaking for himself on July 11, the president offered that he had 'hundreds of thousands of dollars that I don't need.' ... 

"The president may be perfectly confident that the best use of his excess cash is to pay more taxes. Those who live in the real world may consider the government hopelessly wasteful and inefficient. If the president really wants to get the most bang for his charity buck, he'd be far better advised to donate to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America or the Wounded Warriors Fund than to the IRS."

"Tax increases are lurking just over the horizon. The White House hasn’t made spending concessions just because the president wants to campaign as a deficit cutter next year. It has made concessions because it knows that taxes are already scheduled to go up when the Bush-era tax rates expire at the end of 2012. 

"If Obama gains a second term, Congressional Republicans will have to choose between a deal that lets the top rate go back to 39 percent (a $700 billion tax increase over 10 years) or no deal at all (a $3.8 trillion tax increase). Obviously, this dilemma won’t exist if President Mitt Romney occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But Obama’s re-election is the more likely scenario, meaning that any deal struck this summer comes with a very large asterisk attached: *Includes tax increases to be named later."

"We don't need new taxes. We need new taxpayers, people that are gainfully employed, making money and paying into the tax system. Then we need a government that has the discipline to take that additional revenue and use it to pay down the debt and never grow it again."