An astonishing review of federal pay data by USA Today shows a shocking rise in federal hiring rolls as well as government salaries. Since the beginning of the recession in December, 2007, private employment has gone down 6.3%, but the federal, non-military workforce has expanded by 9.8%. The average salary for federal workers has soared 6.6% in just eighteen months, and now stands at $71,000 – more than $30,000 above the private sector average. Nineteen percent of the federal workforce now consists of six-figure-salary jobs, and 22,000 federal workers draw salaries above $170,000, an increase of 93%. While the public rightly protests big pay packages for government-assisted banks that lost billions, we should be similarly indignant about all the new workers and skyrocketing salaries for the government itself, which is already operating trillions of dollars in the red.