Just in Time for the Fall Elections

"Washington (AP) -- The Obama administration is providing $3 billion to unemployed homeowners facing foreclosure in the nation's toughest job markets.  The Treasury Department says it will send $2 billion to 17 states (I bet they are all BLUE states!) that have unemployment rates higher than the national average for a year. They will use the money for programs to aid unemployed homeowners. Some of those states have already designed such programs.  Another $1 billion will go to a new program being run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It will provide homeowners with emergency zero-interest rate loans of up to $50,000 for up to two years."

So far this week, we have $3 billion going to distressed homeowners and $26.1 billion to state education, mainly to satisfy and save the teacher union jobs.  (Mr. Obama quotes the union figure of 160,000 potential saved teacher jobs, those don't have to come out of the classroom.  According to research by Eric Hanushek of Stanford University, student enrollment grew by 22% from 1990 to 2007, but teacher employment grew by 41%. Since 2000, enrollment has grown by 5% but teacher employment by 10%.  In addition, the National Right to Work Committee estimates that two of every three teachers belong to unions.)

The today's Opinion section of the "Wall Street Journal" opines that the unions themselves could have prevented some layoffs had they been willing to adjust their rich benefits.  "In Milwaukee, for example, nearly all of the 500 teacher layoffs announced earlier this year could have been avoided if the unions had agreed to change health plans that cost $23,000 per teacher per year for family coverage.  They could have accepted a still-rich $17,000 plan. The unions chose the layoffs, betting (correctly) that Democrats in Washington would come to their rescue. This is the same union that decided to keep its Viagra, which would have saved $750,000 a year, instead of its teachers."

At a time when private sector workers' pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.  The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.  Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

I ask you, where is the outrage?