Growing the Workforce but Not the Payroll says the Washington Post’s website.

But the story says the opposite: the federal workforce will increase (by 5.2 percent in the coming year and by more than 10 percent total during Bush’s presidency–the costly legacy of “compassionate” conservatism) while federal employees will get a raise of 2.9 percent under the Bush plan. Columnist Stephen Barr reports that civilian employees–including, presumably, those State Department types last heard whingeing about postings in Iraq–are upset that they aren’t getting the same raises as the uniformed men and women fighting our wars, i.e. those being shot at and bombed, or eligible to be shot at or bombed shortly.

Of course the headline obscures the news–a growing number of federal clock-punchers plus higher salaries for all federal employees means a much, much bigger payroll, i.e. the opposite of what the WaPo headline says.

As any copy-editor will tell you, headline-composers are the most-read writers in any newspaper, followed by obituarists, the kind folks who write letters to the editor, and the intern who compiles the sports scores. Marquee op-ed columnists are about No. 11.