Study Counts More Employees, Cites Increase in ContractorsBy Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 6, 2006; Page A21
The federal government keeps getting bigger.
The Republican Party's oft-stated affinity for smaller government has not applied during the Bush administration. According to a recent study, not only is the number of federal civil servants on the rise, but so are the numbers of employees working for government-funded contractors and for organizations that receive government grants.
Roll all of those together -- and mix in the numbers of postal workers and military personnel on the federal payroll -- and the "true size" of the federal government stands at 14.6 million employees, said Paul C. Light, the study's author and a government professor at New York University.
That compares with 12.1 million employees in 2002, said Light, who has tracked the growth of government for years and has data for as far back as 1990. The latest increase is almost entirely due to contractors, whose ranks swelled by 2.5 million since 2002, Light wrote in his 10-page research brief.
"This time,
almost all of the growth can be attributed from the war on terrorism, which boosted Defense spending for both goods and services systems and covered the continued cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," he wrote.
"The rest of the hidden workforce held steady at roughly 2.9 million grantees, while civil service employment inched up and postal employment fell."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR2006100501782_pf.htmlWhite House says economy slowedJEANNINE AVERSA
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The economy probably slowed considerably in late summer, reflecting a slumping housing market, a White House economic official said Thursday.
Allan Hubbard, director of the National Economic Council, predicted the pace of growth from July through September could range from 1 percent to 2 percent.
The Bush administration's fresh observations on the economy come with the election season in high gear, and a day before the president was due to appear at a FedEx Express facility in the Washington area to promote his economic policies. Voters' choices at the polls on Nov. 7 are likely to be shaped in part by how they are faring economically. The administration says Americans are mostly better off, while Democrats disagree.
Among those surveyed in an AP-Ipsos poll in early October, people trusted Democrats to do a better job of handling the economy than Republicans.
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