Paul C. Light of Brookings is getting attention for his new paper showing that Bush has vastly expanded government employment. The Reuters story says: “The growth represents a roughly 75 percent rebound from federal work force declines linked to the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend,’ which helped enable former President Bill Clinton to declare in 1996 that ‘the era of big government is over.’
Light’s own study says: “Even as the cuts were underway at these three agencies, the federal government added roughly 300,000 non-defense-related on- and off-budget jobs back into government between 1993 and 1999, and nearly 550,000 non-defense-related jobs in the three years since. In addition, increased defense spending has produced roughly 500,000 new defense-related jobs since 1999. When all the jobs are totaled, the federal government has added back all but 500,000 of the jobs cut after the Cold War.... Although some of the post-1999 growth occurred in the final year of the Clinton administration, most of the 1.1 million new on- and off-budget jobs appear to reflect increased spending since the Bush Administration entered office. Many of these jobs have been added at agencies involved in the war on terrorism, but many have also been added at domestic agencies such as Health and Human Services.”
