By ADAM PUTNAM Special To The Tampa Tribune

A wise man once joked he would like to become a government program so that he could enjoy eternal life on earth. A slight exaggeration perhaps, but it could begin to feel like that’s the case if we don’t get the growth of government back under control fast.

One of the disturbing trends that has emerged during our current economic upheaval has been a dramatic growth in the size of the federal government even as the private sector has gone through a drastic contraction.

Since the beginning of 2009, America’s economy has lost more than 3.8 million jobs. In September alone, the Labor Department announced another 263,000 Americans lost their jobs. Unemployment is at its highest level since 1983. And as Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress earlier this month, even if the economy is beginning to recover, it probably won’t be a strong rebound and unemployment could continue to be nearly 10 percent nationally throughout 2010. Here in Central Florida, we’ve been hit even harder, with unemployment rates reaching more than 12 percent in some areas.

However, as the private sector shrinks, the public sector has grown. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the federal government has hired more than 45,000 employees since the beginning of this year. Federal employment will have risen by nearly 16 percent between 2006 and 2010, an increase of 286,000 full-time employees.

So, even as the economy has been shrinking, the government has been expanding. According to a recent analysis, since the beginning of the recession, the economy has lost 7 million jobs, while the federal government has added 75,000.

The burden of a bigger government on a smaller tax-paying private sector could end up stifling economic recovery and mean more trouble long into the future. In case you are wondering, the national debt today stands at $11.9 trillion. And that number continues to grow. The deficit for 2010 is projected to add another $1.4 trillion to the debt. Perhaps we should be grateful, because in 2009 the deficit was $200 billion higher.

The jobs that have been added to the federal government are part of a permanent expansion of the workforce. And just where are these newly minted government employees going? Some of the biggest growth areas in the federal government since 2006 are:

• Department of Energy, up 15 percent;

• Department of Health and Human Services, up 10 percent;

• Department of Labor, up nearly 14 percent;

• Agency for International Development, 29 percent;

• And the Office of Personnel Management, more than 16 percent.

So even as technology and productivity improvements have redefined the private sector, the federal government still continues to hire to replace its Great Society workforce. As expansive as this growth in government has been, even more growth is planned. On the president’s agenda are even more expansions of existing bureaucracies and the creation of whole new bureaucracies.

The bottom line is that as President Obama’s policy agenda moves forward, it is going to need hundreds of thousands of additional federal employees to staff the growth in the bureaucracy. This pace of growth in the federal government has not been seen since the Lyndon Johnson administration in the 1960s.

All this federal growth is coming with a steep price tag that will add weight onto the shoulders of every American taxpayer who is already struggling under the yoke of this weak economy. Unfortunately, this is a burden we may never be free of.

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, is a member of the House Financial Services Committee and represents the 12th District, which includes portions of Hillsborough, Polk and Osceola counties.