[tanknetter]

I respect your opinion and vantage point. But you seem to have conveniently ignored the unprecedented (The One’s favorite word, no?) expansion of the Federal leviathan that has occurred over the last 3 years. Record expansions in all Fed depts (except the military, of course). Record expansions in salaries. Even in limousines, for Pete’s sake! This is more than the “baseline floor” you referred to. The explosion in #s of federal employees, their increased salaries and their prime benefit packages all affect the regional economy (they spend their $ somewhere).

The question then for me is, where is the "record expansion" of the Federal workforce really taking place?

For instance TSA, an agency that didn't exist 10 years ago, has about 50,000 screeners that (mostly) weren't Federal employees 10 years ago.

Now, we can discuss (and, I assume, agree on) the problems with TSA as a separate issue. But in terms of how the growth of the Federal government has enhanced the economy o the DC region it's hard to make a case that TSA's growth really played a role ... because the vast majority of those screeners aren't deployed to the three DC-area airports.

Can the same be said, therefore of the other areas (ICE, CBP, FBI) where the Federal government has experienced record growth? My guess is that it could, and we'd find that a heck of a lot of the growth is happening in various agency/dept field offices outside the DC area.

[nuvista]

Quick google search of “expansion of federal government under Obama” yields tons of data and examples.
Wash Examiner editorial from July 2011 summed it up nicely. O’s added > 100,000 fed jobs since being immaculated. Avg fed job salary is well over $100K, nearly 2X avg private sector salary.
TSA was functioning and populated prior to O.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/obama-pro-growth-government