Right on cue, a nice little point on last month's news that government agencies wasted $98 billion in taxpayer dollars last year:

The U.S. Postal Service spent more than $792,000 "without justification" on meals and events in one five-month period even as it reported losing $3.8 billion this year, the agency's inspector general says in a report. Employees spent $792,022 on meals and external events "without justification for food purchases, purchased alcohol without officer approval and exceeded the dollar limit for meals," the report says. Among the purchases were crab cakes, beef Wellington and scallops at an installation ceremony for one of several postmasters in the United States, the report says.

Eh. Nothing that can't be covered with a few more Reid-driven soak the rich payroll taxes. And it's tough to begrudge USPS employees the occasional excess, given the superb level of customer service they provide. One of the employees in the downtown LA post office used to hang a sign reading "YOUR LACK OF PLANNING IS NOT MY PROBLEM," which was strange insofar as customer needs are in theory a service provider's only problem.

I don't know if it's still up - I go to the Fedex across the street, where the profit motive is still a thing - but that office has always been a nightmare. Two years ago I saw a rushed woman tear up because, like a schoolchild, she was instructed to go to the back of a huge line and "rewrite her shipping label" on her package. The USPS public servant actually drew a huge half circle in the air with her finger, the better to communicate where the back of the line was and how to get there.

Anyway, Paul Krugman says ReidCare is "an awesome achievement" and Mark Steyn believes it represents an unrecoverable loss of the American ethos of individualism and self-sufficiency. Which means that Paul Krugman and Mark Steyn more or less agree about the kind of welfare state at the end of this road. You'll know we're close when we pass the "liver cancer drugs 'too expensive'" signpost.

But at least in the meantime it'll help pay down the national debt. Gibbs said so himself and he wouldn't have made the promise unless the Obama administration was confident in its projections. Otherwise the press will totally hold them accountable.

References and related after the jump...