By Tom Elia

It is hard to fathom the enormity of the federal government.

With an annual budget of almost $4 trillion, annual deficits of well over $1 trillion, outstanding debt of over $15 trillion, and unfunded future liabilities of well over $50 trillion, Washington has become by far the largest, most expensive organization in the history of human civilization.

The federal government has become so enormous that its growth alone in the last five years measured in the number of employees and the amount of spending dwarfs entire urban populations and other, massive organizations.

An eye-popping example of the immensity of the federal government was recently illustrated by USA Today's Dennis Cauchon, who last week reported U.S. Office of Personnel Management data showing an increase of about 277,500 federal government employees since September 2006.

Every day we see large numbers in reference to the federal budget, the federal deficit, the EU's financial troubles -- you name it. But just how large is this five-year increase of 277,5000 employees in the federal workforce?

To put it into context, the increase in the number of federal government employees hired since September 2006 alone is larger than the populations of all but about the 70 largest cities in the United States.

The number of federal employees added during this period is also larger than the populations of 37 of the nation's state capitals.

How much do these additional employees cost the taxpayers? The average annual federal salary, with benefits, was about $123,000 per civilian employee in 2009, which means that Washington is this year spending about $34 billion more just in the costs associated with net new hires since September 2006.

That additional cost alone is larger than the total FY 2011 budgets of four federal, cabinet-level departments:

* Department of Justice, $31.3 billion

* Department of Energy, $31.2 billion

* Department of the Interior, $13.1 billion

* Department of Commerce, $9.25 billion

The additional cost is also larger than that spent on a number of individual federal agencies and programs in FY 2011:

* NASA, $17.7 billion

* Environmental Protection Agency, $9.2 billion

* National Science Foundation, $6.8 billion

* Army Corps of Engineers, $6 billion

* Small Business Administration, $1.3 billion

In addition, the amount spent this year on these new federal employees will be larger than the entire annual budgets of 36 different states this year.

Many people worry that large corporations wield too much political influence in the U.S.

How does the total annual cost for the more than 277,000 additional federal employees hired in the last five years compare to corporate revenues?

There are only about 270 corporations in the entire world with revenues greater than $34 billion per year, and only 80 of which are in this country, according to Fortune magazine.

Companies such as Amazon.com ($34.2 billion) and FedEx ($34.7 billion) had revenues roughly equivalent to that which will be spent this year just on these new federal employees.

And the amount spent annually on these new federal employees is larger than the revenues generated by huge corporations such as DuPont ($32.7 billion), Sprint ($32.5 billion), General Dynamics ($32.4 billion), American Express ($30.2 billion), Google ($29.3 billion), Time Warner ($26.9 billion), McDonald's ($24.1 billion), Motorola ($22.8 billion), and American Airlines ($22.2 billion).

Of the grievances against King George cited in the Declaration of Independence, one reads:

"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."

Compared to the standards being set today, King George was a piker.

Tom Elia edits The New Editor web site and is author of "When Lobsters Take Flight: A skeptic parodies politicians, 'progressives,' potentates, and the press reporting on them all."

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Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2012/01/how-make-leviathans-growth-understandable/2057346#ixzz1ibOHdmJF

By Jim Geraghty - National Review

John Boehner's job seems safe.

For Republicans, 2012 is a year of high hopes and immense possibilities. By this time next year, the GOP could have won the White House and the Senate and kept control of the House of Representatives. But if fortune turns against Republicans next cycle and the White House and Senate escape their grasp, what’s the outlook for the House, the GOP’s last line of defense against a second term of Obama? Republicans currently occupy 242 of the 435 seats; can Speaker John Boehner keep the total above 218?

For now, the outlook for House Republicans is quite healthy. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) contends that not only are the odds of the GOP keeping the majority extraordinarily high, but they have opportunity to win a sizable number of seats that narrowly eluded them last year.

The first advantage that Republicans see is an essentially unchanged issue environment from 2010. “It’s a cliché that ‘a year is a lifetime in politics,’ but we are still talking about the big issues from 2010,” said NRCC political director Mike Shields on a conference call Wednesday. “Unemployment, spending, debt, taxes — we’re still having that fight. Those issues were huge drivers of votes among both independents and our base voters, and they’re still what we’re talking about — we’re still debating it this week! If the mood of the country shifts or underlying issues change, then the coming year’s election will be different from last year’s, but we seem to be heading into a similar political environment.”

Redistricting
The biggest change from 2010 will be altered district lines in many populous states — minor changes in some, dramatic changes in others. Shields says that the NRCC believes that 15 once-competitive seats have become safely Republican through redistricting.

Pennsylvania appears to be on the verge of finalizing a new map that illustrates the phenomenon well. The Keystone State lost one congressional seat from population shifts in the past decade, and the result is likely to be at least one fewer Democrat in the state’s delegation and several more Republicans with better odds for reelection. In the Cook Partisan Voting Index, Rep. Mike Kelly’s northwestern 3rd district has shifted from R+3 to R+5; Rep. Jim Gerlach’s 6th district has shifted from D+4 to R+1; and Rep. Lou Barletta’s 11th district leaped from D+4 to R+6.

Republican lawmakers achieved this by making some heavily Republican districts less Republican, but still safe (Rep. Bill Shuster’s 9th district, the most Republican in the state, changed from R+17 to R+10) and safe Democratic districts even more heavily Democratic (Rep. Allyson Schwartz’s 13th district shifted from D+7 to D+13) — essentially, moving excess Republicans into swing districts, and moving swing districts’ Democrats into districts that already go Democratic anyway.

“[Democratic incumbents] Mark Critz and Jason Altmire are now drawn into [the] same district, and it’s an R+6,” Shields says. “It doesn’t look like the [former Democratic Rep. John] Murtha district anymore. . . . We feel pretty bullish about Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In one, we shored up some of our members, and we unzipped a ludicrously Democratic map in the other. The most heavily Republican district in that state is [three-term Democratic congressman] Heath Shuler’s.”

The redistricting process is not yet complete nationwide; to the NRCC, the biggest unresolved issues remain in New York, Florida, New Jersey, and Texas.

Adam Temple, a spokesman for the Republican State Leadership Committee, offered perspective on the process so far: “As of today, new maps for 278 of the 435 U.S. House seats have been enacted — although 81 seats are located in states in which [federal] approval of their plans is required under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act . . . and that approval has not yet been granted. This means that 64 percent of the congressional redistricting is completed. Right now our projection is that the GOP/Democrat box score is a +1, but a more cautious view might be −1.” He also notes that in some states — including New Mexico, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina, and Virginia — courts are hearing cases that challenge decisions or seek to resolve deadlock.

Recruiting
Asked which challengers have him particularly excited at this point in the cycle, Shields immediately names Ricky Gill in California. Gill is running against a three-term Democratic incumbent, Jerry McNerney, in the newly drawn 9th district, which comprises parts of San Joaquin County, East Contra Costa County, and southern Sacramento County.

“We came close in the last cycle in this district [McNerney won by one percentage point over Republican David Harmer], and while this district became a little more Democratic in redistricting, it now includes more of the San Joaquin Valley. Ricky is from that part of the district,” Shields says.

Gill, an Indian-American law-school student, will be 25 — the minimum age to serve in the House — on Election Day 2012. In 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated Ricky to the California State Board of Education. Following his confirmation by the California state senate, Ricky served as the youngest member of the administration and the sole representative of more than 6 million public-school students.

Shields is also happy to see that several GOP candidates who came close in 2010 are coming back in 2012. “When you have a big wave election, a sort of hangover happens — you see a continuation of momentum some cycles. Some Democrats become not so sure they want to run with Barack Obama; some of our guys feel like they may have missed a good opportunity in 2010.” He mentions Randy Altschuler in New York, Andy Barr in Kentucky, and Jackie Walorski in Indiana as near-misses who may get over the top with the experience of the previous cycle. Those three lost the closest, fourth-closest, and eleventh-closest House races in the country in 2010.

“We reject the notion that we have to play defense this cycle,” Shields says. “Last year the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] said they were going to play offense, and they ended up playing offense [i.e., funding challenges to incumbent Republicans] in two districts. This year, we think we’re in 14 districts where we have solid races, and we could get to 17–18 by the time we’re done.”

The Presidential Race’s Impact
On paper, a high-stakes presidential campaign should bring out each party’s base and create potential trouble for red-state Democrats and blue-state Republicans. But Shields says he’s actually more worried about what he calls “orphan states” — ones that are considered not competitive in the presidential race, and thus are less likely to see considerable investment from other party committees and grassroots groups.

“California, Illinois, and New York — those are states where we have competitive offensive opportunities, but we need to create the infrastructure,” Shields says. “In the last 20 years in California, there have hardly ever been any competitive races. This cycle, we could have eight, nine, maybe ten competitive races there.” By contrast, House Republicans in states such as Ohio, Colorado, and Wisconsin will be helped by the expected furious get-out-the-vote campaigns by the Republican nominee’s campaign and its allies, and of course will face similar efforts from the Obama campaign and its allies.

“When we won our majorities, we did not win with a bunch of swing-y states that go with the tide,” Shields said. “We won our majority by winning a lot of Republican seats that we really never should have lost,” pointing to seats in conservative, often rural regions in places such as Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas. “These are ones that are never going back. Our map is built on those types of districts, and through redistricting, we’ve been able to strengthen some of those marginal seats.”

Clichés about quick reversals of fortune in politics are cited for good reason, but for now, in an election cycle marked by continued debate about anxiety about employment, the political leader in Washington with the best odds of keeping his job might be House Speaker John Boehner.

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Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot on NRO.  To read more, visit www.NationalReview.com.

3) As Texas deals with what it will do about the fast-approaching Dec. 15 filing date and March primary date, in light of the Supreme Court ruling on a new Congressional map, one possibility is a primary on March 6 for statewide contests and other unaffected races and then one in May for affected campaigns, Roll Call notes.

This could mean a lower turnout March primary -- which could work in favor of underdog GOP Senate candidate Ted Cruz.

2) The latest United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll shows Americans are just as dissatisfied with Congress as they were before the wave elections of 2006 and 2010. Forty-nine percent said it was time to give a new person a chance in their district while just 31 percent said their representative has performed well enough at their job to deserve to be reelected. Not a good time to be a congressional incumbent.

1) Newt Gingrich and Romney were both in New Hampshire on Monday -- and went after each other aggressively. Romney said Gingrich needs to return his Freddie Mac consulting fees while the former Speaker responded that Romney should "give back all the money he earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain."

Romney's still the frontrunner in New Hampshire, but Gingrich is running second -- and first in the other early states. That spells trouble for the former governor who may need a strong performance in New Hampshire as a firewall. For his own part, Romney's attempting to put more pressure on Gingrich proclaiming that the former Speaker is the frontrunner.

Meanwhile, Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., got a shout out from Gingrich while the former Speaker was in the Granite State. "Reelecting Senator Brown is a key step toward being able to repeal Obamacare," Gingrich said.

Jessica Taylor contributed

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To read the entire story, visit www.HotlineOnCall.NationalJournal.com

By David Welna - National Public Radio

President Obama put Congress on notice Tuesday in a speech in Osawatomie, Kan.

He said that unless a temporary payroll tax cut is extended this month, 160 million Americans would see their taxes go up next year by an average of $1,000. But there's concern on both sides of the political aisle that the payroll tax holiday might be undermining the solvency of Social Security.

Fact No. 1: Last year, for the first time in its 75-year history, Social Security took in less money than it paid out.

Fact No. 2: This year, the first of the baby boomers reached retirement age and began collecting Social Security benefits.

Fact No. 3: The payroll tax holiday that Congress approved a year ago reduced Social Security's revenues this year by $105 billion.

Obama showed no sign of being troubled by those facts when he popped into the White House briefing room earlier this week and called on Congress to extend the payroll tax cut for another year.

"It will help families pay their bills, it will spur spending, it will spur hiring, and it's the right thing to do," Obama said.

Republicans on Capitol Hill might disagree. Although they do not think other tax cuts should be paid for, they make an exception when it comes to Social Security.

"Getting rid of the way we fund Social Security through the payroll tax is a dangerous idea," says Lamar Alexander, the Senate's No. 3 Republican. "Taking money from Social Security funding is a long-term raid on solvency of Social Security."

It's not just Republicans raising red flags about Social Security, either. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, says he agrees with Obama that middle-class families and the working poor need tax relief to weather tough economic times.

"My concern is diverting hundreds of billions of dollars from the Social Security trust fund into that immediate tax relief," Sanders says. "So I would love to see tax relief, but done in a different way."

Charles Blahous, whom Obama appointed last year to be one of the six trustees of Social Security and Medicare, thinks it's a far greater danger than most people anticipate. He too says the payroll tax break might be harming Social Security's long-term solvency.

"I mean, I'm a Republican and I'm a conservative, and if you were to ask me at a first approximation, do I want lower taxes or higher taxes, then obviously I want lower taxes," Blahous says. "The problem here is that I'm also a public Social Security trustee, and so I'm honor-bound to identify when this causes a change or a difficulty for the Social Security program, which it does."

That's because Social Security has long been considered self-financing and thus politically immune from budget cuts. But that could change, Blahous says, now that employees are no longer paying their full share into Social Security because of the payroll tax holiday.

"This could be the beginning of the end of the idea that this is an earned benefit, [and] where benefits enjoy a certain amount of political protection because of a notion that they have been paid for in the past by the beneficiaries," he says.

There's anxiety among Democrats as well about the prospect of prolonging the payroll tax cut. Nancy Altman, co-director of Social Security Works, a Washington-based advocacy group, says she's been alarmed to see a Democratic administration dipping into Social Security's revenue stream to stimulate the economy.

"Democrats were the ones that created Social Security and the ones that were the strongest champions over its 76 years," Altman says. "So to have a Democratic president proposing to undo the dedicated revenue ... it's a fundamental change that supporters of the program, I think, should oppose."

Altman worries the payroll tax cut has become so popular it will be hard to end it, and that's one reason why she opposed it in the first place.

"Many of us at the time said that it's no way this is just going to last one year. And sure enough, we're back now talking about expanding it," she says.

Some lawmakers do say the tax break is worrisome, including Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

"I think one more year should be about the limit," Whitehouse says, "because of the nature of Social Security."

A program that, until now, has always paid its way.

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To read the full story, visit www.NPR.org.