John Tamny Reviews 'Shadowbosses' Decrying Real Reasons for Fiscal Incontinence

OR WHY TAXPAYERS NEED POLITICIANS WHO'LL STARVE GOVERNMENT BEAST
                       
BE THEY REPUBLICANS OR DEMOCRATS, POLITICIANS as a rule regularly talk up the need to reduce government expenditure. In 2008, big spender Barack Obama spoke of his plan to address waste “line by line” in the federal budget, and it’s a certainty that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will reveal similar rhetoric in an effort to remove Obama from the White House.

Whether Romney and Ryan succeed or not is almost immaterial at this point, in that no matter who is in the Oval Office come 2013, government spending will go up. It always does, and this is true regardless of the political party in power. Though voters might wish otherwise, politicians arrive in Washington idealistic about spending cuts, but ultimately leave behind a government bigger than the one that existed upon their arrival.

My own theory has long been that politicians exist to spend money, thus explaining government’s consistent growth, but an excellent new book – Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind – by Mallory and Elizabeth Factor has forced me to rethink my position. Yes, politicians are wastrels, but it seems a major driver of their fiscal incontinence is a growing blob seemingly beyond their control: government employee unions.

As the authors put it, “Our government is no longer answering to the American people; it has new masters.” Quite scarily, those masters are not politicians; rather they’re the individuals who manipulate our elected officials with money and sometimes muscular threats, “These are the heads of government employee unions: the Shadowbosses.”

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