The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)released a study telling Americans if they want a raise, they should go work for the federal government, because federal workers are compensated much better than those in the private sector. The CBO did an apples to apples comparison of federal and private sector employee salaries and benefits from 2005-2010. The compared workers who were similar in the following characteristics:

• Level of education
• Years of work experience a
• Occupation
• Employer’s size,
• Geographic location (region of the country and urban or rural location)
• Demographic characteristics (age, sex, race, ethnicity, marital status, immigration status, and citizenship).

…and what they found was staggering.

Salary:

• Federal civilian workers with no more than a high school education earned about 21 percent more, on average, than similar workers in the private sector.

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From Bloomberg:

Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show.

The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046.

The figures demonstrate how the nation’s political and financial classes are prospering as the economy struggles with unemployment above 9 percent and thousands of Americans protest in the streets against income disparity, said Kevin Zeese, director of Prosperity Agenda, a Baltimore-based advocacy group trying to narrow the divide between rich and poor.

“There’s a gap that’s isolating Washington from the reality of the rest of the country,” Zeese said. “They just get more and more out of touch.” (more…)

I’ll keep this short.

No one understands “what” is going to be cut.  Saying discretionary spending is going to be cut over ten years sounds like a Nigerian email scam.

So please Boehner, for the love of god, listen to your buddy Morgan…. Just cut federal employee pay.

Give Obama three choices:

1. Cut Federal Employee Pay in every department except Military by $30B per year (off baseline) starting 2012:  Ten year savings $300B

2. Cut Federal Employee Pay in every department except Military by $60B per year (off baseline) starting in 2012: Ten year savings $600B+

3. Cut Federal Employee Pay in every department except Military by $90B per year (off baseline) starting in 2012: Ten year savings $1T+.

Make Obama choose.  He can’t win.

Tell him that if he chooses low, when the credit card is maxed out again, he is getting the same deal next time.   Suddenly, ALL  Federal public employees are with our program.

Overnight, the entire Federal workforce will be desperate to help Republicans make real cuts.   Overnight, our “servants” will be finally pushing out the deadwood, over the howls of their union bosses.   Let’s get public employee interests aligned with the public.

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From AFP:

US President Barack Obama on Monday proposed a freeze on most government pay in a move to trim the country’s massive deficit.

The White House said the two year freeze would save two billion dollars in the 2011 fiscal year.

The measures will apply to all civilian federal employees including at theDepartment of Defense.

Military personnel will not affected.

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July 20, 2010, Wall Street Journal “White House on Perpetual Tour to Boost Stimulus”

“President Barack Obama and top officials are stepping up the pace of their travel to promote the economic stimulus package to skeptical voters—particularly in states with close mid-term election contests in the fall. The White House has announced a total of 172 trips outside Washington, D.C., in which administration officials have discussed the stimulus package and its economic impact in the year and a half since the package was signed.”

July 20, 2010, The White House. Office of the Press Secretary “President Obama Expands Greenhouse Gas Reduction Target for Federal Operations”

Washington, DC – President Obama announced today that the Federal Government will reduce greenhouse gas pollution from indirect sources, such as employee travel and commuting, by 13% by 2020….

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From New Jersey’s Daily Record:

The Obama Administration handed out more than $400 million in awards to federal employees last year, up by more than $80 million from the prior year, according to new government data.

The biggest winners were air traffic controllers and top managers in Washington, a review of fiscal year 2009 salary reports from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management showed.

OPM’s data, obtained by the Asbury Park Press through a freedom of information request, account for 1.3 million employees, or about 65 percent of the federal civilian work force.

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Last Wednesday, I announced on Big Government the launch of a new initiative that would enable taxpayers to directly propose federal spending cuts on the House floor. Today, over a quarter-million Americans will get to see whether their representatives in Congress share their specific fiscal priorities.

For those who hunger to hold their elected officials accountable for perpetuating a culture of reckless runaway spending in Washington, meet YouCut.

This first-of-its-kind interactive initiative empowers taxpayers with direct democracy at a time when their faith in Congress’ fiscal prudence has reached its lowest. YouCut allows the public to vote each week on one of five wasteful spending items that they would like to strip from the federal budget. Once the votes are tallied, Republicans force a vote on whether or not to take up and debate the cut on the House floor.

During the first week, a plurality of voters – over 81,000! – chose to axe a recently created $2.5 billion annual welfare program that undercuts cost-saving welfare reforms made in the mid 1990’s.  Within 5 days of the experiment, 280,000 Americans have cast a vote either online or by text message.  At several points, more than 5,000 votes were being cast per hour, with less than one percent of votes originating from inside the beltway.

The overwhelming response speaks to the extreme levels of frustration that you feel toward a Congress that refuses to listen to you.  Over the last decade, taxpayers have grown weary of the incessant federal spending binges – no matter which party has been in power. They now look across the Atlantic with horror as Europe collapses under the weight of its own debt. Fear that America will go down the same road has only amplified calls for spending restraint.

Through YouCut, concerned citizens are cracking through the wall of resistance put up by big spenders in Washington to create a new culture of savings. This poses a threat to several in Congress who are invested heavily in preserving the status quo – hence the Democratic National Committee’s vigorous effort to discredit the program.  Worse, rather than listening to the hundreds of thousands of Americans, Tim Kaine (Chairman of the DNC) and Chris Van Hollen (Chairman of the DCCC) chose to mock the opinions of those who voted.  Not listening – a common theme for Democrats.

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Media Matters, the defender of liberal media, jumped into the developing controversy and debate over White House Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle’s unsolicited White House emails to federal employees. Media Matters scolds and makes fun of CBS News and Fox News for highlighting the issue, calling the claims “pure speculation”. Ironically, Media Matters doesn’t deny that the unsolicited emails have been sent but rather they defend the emails by saying, “it appears they are sent out to everyone on the whitehouse.gov mailing list.” Well, duh. That’s the problem. Why are federal employees on the whitehouse.gov email list? And why are federal employees being hounded to do the White House’s political bidding for a trillion dollar entitlement program?

Building support for President Barack Obama’s health reform package by sending consecutive emails to federal employees’ official government email inboxes and instructing them to forward the emails to their “friends, family and online networks” is not only unethical but possibly illegal.

Media Matters also complains that the story has no anonymous quotes from frustrated federal employees in order to prove the story. Which is a fair point. I’ll give them that. So here are two anonymous quotes from State Department employees that didn’t sign up for the White House emails but are still receiving political musings from Nancy-Ann DeParle and the White House:

Anonymous Quote #1:

“ I didn’t sign up for this. Why do I have to bother with political fights from work. This is inappropriate and distracting to REAL issues.”

Anonymous Quote #2:

“I have been receiving these emails at my state.gov address, unsolicited e-mails such as the one below on a near weekly basis.  Kinda threatening dontcha think? Budget problems if it doesn’t pass?”

Department of State employees receive hundreds of official government emails every day on pressing issues like the Israeli-Palestinian issue or the Iranian nuclear weapons issue. Should they have to worry about partisan political emails threatening budget complications if Obama’s bill isn’t passed?

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