Expanding government will cripple country

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised he would create 2 million new jobs in his first year in office. That has obviously not come to pass. In that speech, he also said that 80 percent of those jobs would be in the private sector. If 20 percent of those promised jobs were in the public sector, that amounts to 400,000 new non-military public employees.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 for occupations that exist both in government and in the private sector. By comparison, the private sector workers earned $60,046. These figures were for 2008, the most recent available.

Add in the value of health, pension and other benefits worth $40,785 for the government workers and $9,982 for private workers and the spread widens. These numbers are from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The cost of continued government expansion will cripple this country. How many more are going to have to be hired to administer Obama's new health care empire?

Gary Rees

Manchester