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.

• Workers whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree earned roughly the same hourly wages, on average, in both the federal government and the private sector.

• Federal workers with a professional degree or doctorate earned about 23 percent less, on average, than their private-sector counterparts. Overall  Federal civilian employees receive 2 percent more in cash wages than private-sector employees.

But it’s the benefits that make the difference:

• Average benefits for federal workers with no more than a high school diploma were 72 percent higher than for their private-sector counterparts.

• Average benefits for federal workers whose education ended in a bachelor’s degree were 46 percent higher than for similar workers in the private sector.

• Workers with a professional degree or doctorate received roughly the same level of average benefits in both sectors.

• Overall Federal civilian employees enjoy a 48 percent advantage over their private-sector counterparts.

Put it all together, and the total package of the average federal employee is 16% better than their private sector equivalent.

Making matters worse, according to the Huffington Post, President Obama has built in a pay raise for federal employees in his 2013 budget.

An Obama administration official says the White House is proposing a 0.5 percent raise for civilian federal employees in its 2013 budget.

If Congress approves the measure, it would mark the first pay increase for federal workers since the two-year freeze President Barack Obama ordered in 2010.

The expanding federal bureaucracy combined with the difference in compensation is creating something that our Constitution was written to prevent, a ruling class.

This is not something that Obama created, but it is a trend that he as accelerated. It’s also not a problem which he will be willing to fix. A large federal bureaucracy controlling your lives is a goal of a progressive administration. And shouldn’t the “controllers” make more than the “controllees”? It certainly doesn’t hurt that our well paid “controllers” are part of federal unions who own a big piece of this President.

Consider also that the President is currently framing his reelection campaign around the ideas of “fairness” and economic “inequality.” What greater example of inequality is there than federal workers making more money than the very people who pay their salaries, and how fair is it that while the rest of the country suffers with higher unemployment and lower wages, government workers get to take home even more taxpayer money?

This CBO Study is just one more example of how the size of the federal government is getting out of hand and why we must elect candidates who  have the guts to reverse that trend.

If you wish to read the entire CBO report click here.

Yes, it is perfectly OK to fire someone if you are not satisfied with their performance or service, especially if you are the one forking over the dough. That is what makes a free market, capitalist system run in high gear. It feeds competition and pushes service providers to deliver the very best quality. Accountability is an important reason why free societies produce more than controlled societies. Moreover, it’s why many trust the private sector over government. This was precisely what Romney was referring to. Anyone who pays for a service ought to have the ability and right to terminate any agreement with a service provider if certain expectations are not met.

Answering a question about health care Monday morning, Mr. Romney said he would allow individuals to have their own insurance because it would provide the insurance company with an incentive to keep its clients healthy.“It also means that if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them,” Mr. Romney said. “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

He added: “You know, if someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say, ‘You know, I’m going to get someone else to provide that service to me.’”

Mr. Romney was making a point that many Republicans agree with — that individuals should be able to have their own insurance, and choose the plan they want.

But the comment was immediately seized on by one of Mr. Romney’s Republican opponents, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., as he spoke to supporters in Concord, N.H.

It one short statement, Mitt Romney defended capitalism better than any Republican in the field. In fact, a lot of these Republicans are taking pieces of the Obama script of class resentment and using it against Romney’s real and actual experience in the private sector.

Now Romney has said, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say, ‘You know, I’m going to get someone else to provide that service to me.’” Simple, elementary competition. Capitalism 101. And conservatives go, “Eek, a mouse!”

“Totally Irrelevant” John Huntsman: “It may be that he’s slightly out of touch with the economic reality playing out in America right now, and that’s a dangerous place to be.”

“All over the place” Newt Gingrich: “Read the New York Times to see how evil Romney is.”

“I’m a light weight” Rick Santorum: “Romney is just a manager, a CEO.” Really? Is that all?

“Where am I? Why am I here?” Rick Perry: “I created a ringtone that plays, ‘I like to fire people.’ Brilliant.

The rest of Romney’s comment puts the issue in a totally acceptable light.

“I think some people imagine, by the way, that I just went directly to the top position in industry, and in business, that I started off as vice chairman or chairman or C.E.O. of Bain,” he said. “You probably know I started off actually at the entry level, coming out of graduate school in business. First in the Boston Consulting Group. Worked there for a while and then was asked by some folks to go over and join Bain, which was a much smaller company at that point, maybe 25 or 35 professionals. And joined that firm again at the bottom level, and was able over the years to work my way up.”

Oh the humanity! Oh the arrogance! What are we to do with this kind of man running for president?

The report indicates that the other four states considered to be financial “sinkholes” are New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, and Kentucky, all of which have a per taxpayer burden of over $23,000. However, Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebraska, Utah and South Dakota are considered “Sunshine States” because either a per taxpayer’s surplus or nominal per taxpayer’s burden exists in these states.

Interestingly, Republican Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska, a “Sunshine State,” was invited to Hartford by Democratic and Working Families Party Governor, Dannel Malloy, of Connecticut for a regional economic summit in October. Gov. Heineman’s description of his success in bringing about the largest tax cut in his state’s history, and Nebraska’s 4.2% unemployment rate- the second lowest in the nation- drew a sharp contrast to Gov. Malloy’s explanation of his experience in “straigtening out the state’s finances” by enacting the largest tax increase in his state’s history.

“I believe we’re moving in the right direction,” Mr. Malloy said. “The reason I did what I did with respect to the budget was so that I could look business in the face and say, ‘Listen, I believe we’ve got the bulk of our problem behind us. We’ve balanced a budget. We’ve taken the steps necessary to wrestle a structural deficit to the ground and we move forward.’ ”

Sheila Weinberg, founder and CEO of IFTA, however, disagrees. Ms. Weinberg said that Connecticut’s “state officials say their budgets are balanced but do not include employee pension and healthcare obligations in their calculations.”

Indeed, state Republican lawmakers vehemently opposed the budget proposed by Gov. Malloy, and passed by the Democratic legislature, which Mr. Malloy said would save the state an estimated $1.6 billion over the next two years and $21.5 billion over the next two decades. Calling for “shared sacrifice,” the governor’s budget raised taxes, including a retroactive income tax hike, and gave public sector unions- what even many Democrats considered to be- a “sweetheart” concession package. The union concession package, which passed on the second vote, only after state union leaders changed their ratification rules in order to make it easier for the plan to pass, also locked taxpayers into high costs for public sector pensions and healthcare benefits until 2022, when the retirement age for state workers is permitted to be raised by three years.

With the legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal office (OFA) unable to verify the savings in the state’s budget, Republican lawmakers say that at least $600 million of the $1.6 billion in savings are vague, including a projected $180 million in savings from state employees over two years that have yet to be defined.

State Senator Andrew Roraback, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Panel, described the state’s budget situation as “scary.” “We’re talking about $200 million in assumed savings when there is no back-up,” he said.

Desperate for jobs in a state that has experienced little to no job growth in 20 years, Governor Malloy and Democrats in the legislature appear to be counting on even more “hope” with the passage of a bill which puts the state in the role of “venture capitalist.” Democrats voted to spend $291 million over the next decade, to partner with nonprofit Jackson Laboratory, an internationally renowned genetic research institute.

The partnership includes $192 million in funding to construct a 173,000-square-foot research center on the University of Connecticut Health Center campus. An additional $99 million will subsidize Jackson Laboratory’s research operating costs for the first decade. In return, the administration estimates, the project will create more than 7,400 jobs over twenty years, or about 370 jobs per year.

Connecticut’s funding of the project will be financed over 20 years, with costs to the state of an additional $153 million in interest, according to the nonpartisan OFA. Below, Republican Representative Sean Williams articulates the concerns about the lack of information regarding details of the partnership:

Sounds like a lot of money that a “sinkhole” state does not have, to spend on a venture that is inherently risky (biomedical research), for a minimal number of private sector jobs that a “sinkhole” state needs desperately. However, if you are Gov. Malloy, and you are standing in the shadow of President Barack Obama, the champion of the public sector, perhaps private sector jobs are not really all they’re cracked up to be.

Mr. Speaker:  The government’s continuing failure to address our nation’s gut-wrenching unemployment stems from a fundamental disagreement over how jobs are created in the first place.  We are now in the third year of policies predicated on the assumption that government spending creates jobs. We have squandered three years and trillions of dollars of the nation’s wealth on such policies, and they have not worked because they cannot work.

Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy until it has first taken that same dollar OUT of the economy. True, we can SEE the job that is saved or created when the government puts that dollar back into the economy.  What we can’t see as clearly are the jobs that are destroyed or prevented from forming because government has first taken that dollar OUT of the economy.  We see those millions of lost jobs in a chronic unemployment rate and a stagnating economy.

Government can transfer jobs from the productive sector to the government sector by taking money from one and giving it to the other.  That’s at the heart of the President’s plan to spend billions of dollars to hire more teachers and firefighters and police officers.  But these temporary government jobs come at a steep price: every dollar spent sustaining one of these jobs is a dollar taken from the same capital pool that would otherwise have been available to productive businesses to invest in creating permanent jobs.

Government can also transfer jobs from one business to another by taking capital from one and giving it the other. That’s how we got Solyndra.  We put a half-billion dollars at risk to create 1,100 jobs (that’s $450,000 per job).  Now that half-billion dollars are gone and so are the jobs.  And who pays for these losses?  Other businesses and their employees – meaning fewer jobs created.

What government can do very effectively is to create the conditions in which jobs either flourish and expand, or whither and disappear. When we place additional taxes on productivity, jobs disappear.  The President says he only wants to tax millionaires and billionaires, but the tax increases in his so-called jobs plan actually hammer more than 75 percent of net small business income – at a time when we’re counting on those small businesses to create 2/3 of the new jobs that our people desperately need.  That is insane.

When we place additional regulations on productivity, jobs disappear.  That’s what we’re watching in real time: thousands of pages of new regulations from Obamacare, from Dodd-Frank, from the EPA stifling American job creation. It’s no secret why business isn’t expanding – just ask a businessman. They’re scared to death of the additional taxes and regulations they may be facing in the next few years and are pulling back to see what happens.  Ask bankers why they’re not lending and you’ll hear the same answer.

House Republicans have laid out a comprehensive plan to revive the economy through the same policies that worked under Ronald Reagan in the early 1980’s; under John F. Kennedy in the early ‘60’s; under Harry Truman in the mid-‘40’s and under Warren Harding in the early ‘20’s. Reduce the tax and regulatory burdens on the economy and jobs flourish and multiply.

For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare by itself will cost the economy a net loss of 800,000 jobs.  A few weeks ago, the Natural Resources Committee received testimony that just by getting government out of the way and opening up American energy resources to development, the economy could generate 700,000 jobs and $660 billion of direct revenues to the national and state treasuries. Repeal Obamacare and open up American energy resources – there’s 1.5 million jobs right there – at NO cost to taxpayers.

Imagine doing that across all sectors of the economy.  That’s what Republicans are proposing to do.  The fact that the President doesn’t recognize this as a jobs plan leads me to conclude that he simply doesn’t understand how jobs are actually created in the first place. When Ronald Reagan inherited an even worse economy from Jimmy Carter, he reduced the tax and regulatory burdens that were crushing the economy – just as Republicans propose to do today.

Indeed, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, if the economy under Obama had tracked the same as it did under Reagan, 15.7 million more Americans would be working today and per capita income would be $4,000 higher than it is today.

M. Speaker, Freedom works.  It is time that we put it back to work.

Since the Republican Party’s natural constituency is conservative, more so in this tumultuous Tea Party era, most attacks on Perry will be from the right – the attacks from the left will come after Perry wins the nomination.  That the machinery of the left will aid in the early attacks from the right is a given; it’s all part of winning for them.
The Trans-Texas Corridor is one such emerging line of criticism against Gov. Perry.  First proposed by Perry in 2002, the north-south running road would have also included a railway, petroleum pipeline, power lines, and communications cables.

Some conservatives have linked the planned Texas road with the feared, but as yet theoretical, North American Union or NAU and NAFTA, dubbing it the NAFTA Super Highway.  That Perry would have proposed such a thing is yet more proof to them that Perry is somehow the “Establishment” candidate (never mind his comments about the Fed, the Tenth Amendment, and the fact that the same “Establishment” ran Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison against him for governor last year).

So, what’s the deal with Perry’s proposed superhighway and should conservatives be worried?

There are two basic ways to finance roads: taxes or tolls.  That’s why “freeways” aren’t really free – properly understood, they’re “taxways.”  There are also two basic entities that build and operate roads: government or the private sector.

America has had a long history with these arrangements.  The Federal government built Post roads-Constitution: Article I, Section 8-with eminent domain authority-Constitution: Amendment 5).  States built infrastructure projects such as the Erie Canal, paying back the state treasury with tolls from the users.  But private companies built and maintained the majority of roads, operating them as private turnpikes through the early 1800s.  It wasn’t until 1956 that the Federal government took the lead on major inter-urban road construction.  That was the year Congress approved President’s Eisenhower’s “National System of Interstate and Defense Highways,” funded by the Highway Revenue Act, which levied a $0.03 per gallon tax on fuel (now 18.4 cents per gallon).

Texas’ low taxes and light regulatory burden have driven growth at more than double the national average.  The Lone Star State added 4.3 million residents from 2000 to 2010 – Perry became governor in late 2000.  This massive growth, combined with Texas’ status as the number one manufacturing state, has clogged Texas roads with people and commerce (which is far better than the alternative).

To address these needs, Gov. Perry launched the Trans-Texas Corridor, a $184 billion effort to construct a 4,000 miles of toll ways, rail corridors and utility lines.  The environmental left attacked the plan as did conservatives who somehow saw the road as a building block on the way to integrating Canada and Mexico with the U.S.  Opposition was strong enough that Perry had to abandon the plan in 2005.

But, as candidate Perry said a few days ago in a radio interview, aside from raising the money privately to build the needed infrastructure, “…the alternatives would be to raise taxes, ask Washington for money or wait for ‘the asphalt fairy’ to get needed roads built.”

Attempts to attract private investment to build public roads aren’t new.  In 2006, while a California State Assemblyman, I authored AB 2290, a bill to allow the construction of a truck-only toll road out of the Ports of Long Beach and San Pedro, America’s busiest port complex.  My aim was multi-fold: take large and dangerous container truck traffic off of L.A. regional highways; increase the competitiveness of California’s main port; reduce pollution emissions per ton of freight moved though a reduction in congestion; and do so in a way that the users paid for it, rather than California’s public at large.

Competiveness was a major concern driving my bill.  California’s taxes, regulations, and labor laws were driving up the costs of operating out of the nation’s biggest port.  In addition, Mexico was proposing to build a massive new port on their Pacific coast to compete with America.  Further, Panama wanted to double the capacity of the Panama Canal, allowing larger cargo ships to bypass California and head straight for Texas, then on to destinations on the East Coast and Canada via overland road and rail.

Panama’s canal improvement project will be complete by 2014, likely resulting in a significant shift of cargo traffic from California to Texas.  With more than 11 million twenty-foot container units transiting L.A. annually, compared to almost 1.8 million at Houston, America’s fifth-largest port, even a 10 percent shift of traffic from California could result in more than a 50 percent increase in Texas cargo traffic.

Further, rather than being built and operated by the government, my bill would have provided a choice for private companies to build and maintain the road.  For instance, a large Spanish road building firm had pledged some $4 billion of their own investors’ money for a California project, if they were given the opportunity.  With that sort of money in short supply in the Golden State, I thought my fellow lawmakers would jump at the chance to build a road without tax money (preemptive disclosure – no such firms donated to my campaigns).  I was wrong.  My bill was shot down in the Transportation Committee on a 5 to 8 partisan vote, all liberal Democrats against it, all Republicans for it.  I recall the Chair of the committee saying she opposed toll roads because only the wealthy could afford them (never mind that the users would be commercial trucks and the use of the road voluntary).

Both my AB 2290 and Gov. Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor represent current, innovative, limited-government, and free-market oriented thought.  The alternatives, as Perry said, are taxes or Washington – roads don’t build and pay for themselves.

Populists have scored Gov. Perry over the proposed used of eminent domain to build the Trans-Texas Corridor.  But, when hasn’t eminent domain been used to build infrastructure?  Unless land is already owned by the government, eminent domain is the proper Constitutional tool to use – Article I, Section 8 foresees eminent domain’s use, and Amendment 5 assures American citizens that they will be justly compensated for their land, rather than the government simply seizing it.  Without eminent domain, virtually none of today’s current interstate system could have been built.  Constitution-believing conservatives can’t have it both ways – eminent domain power is clearly part of the Constitution.

The proper question should be: is the eminent domain applied for a public use?   In the highly debated Kelo v. City of New London decision in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled (wrongly, in my opinion) that the eminent domain taking of land from a private party and subsequent transfer to another private party, solely for the purpose of redevelopment, was Constitutional.  In this case, local government was using condemnation as a tool to boost tax revenues by changing the economic use of the land.  In the case of the Trans-Texas Corridor, eminent domain would be step in the project’s realization regardless of whether it was funded and run by the government or business and regardless of whether taxes or tolls were used to fund it.  Further, unlike Kelo, the benefit of added infrastructure in Texas would accrue to the public at large – truly, a public use.

Lastly, there has also been unfair criticism over the increase of state debt during Perry’s 10-plus years as governor.  States cannot print money to run a deficit, unlike the Federal government, so this attack on Perry is really about Texas’ bonded indebtedness.  As one would expect in a state that has grown more than 20 percent in a decade, bonds are being used to pay for infrastructure.  Perry’s 2010 Democratic opponent attacked him for “doubling” Texas’ bond debt.  True.  But bonds for transportation account for almost all of this debt increase, going from near zero in 2000 to $11.8 billion in 2009.  Tellingly, bond debt to support parks and general government infrastructure (a soaring category in California), actually shrank 6 percent in Texas under Perry’s watch.

Thus, conservatives who criticize Gov. Perry over the proposed use of eminent domain to build a road aren’t just wrong – they’re actually advocating a position that is unconstitutional it its core.  A further irony: such populist-minded conservatives are actually using one of the same arguments that the Sierra Club and other environmental left, anti-growth groups, have used against Perry.

America’s Second City is now first in traffic congestion.

Recently, the Texas Transportation Institute named Chicago the nation’s most congested city, booting perennial congestion king Los Angeles from the dreaded top slot.

And if you think gridlock is bad now, just wait. Turns out Chicago’s official 25-year transportation plan will spend billions, but traffic congestion will get even worse.

Everyone knows that gridlock leads to wasted time and increased stress, but the effects of degraded mobility are worse than most people realize. Traffic congestion deprives job-seekers of opportunities, robs businesses of customers, and hastens the exodus of residents from the central city to the suburbs.

And although mounting gridlock may seem like the unavoidable result of increased population and strained budgets, the experience of nations from France to Australia proves otherwise. Reason Foundation draws on what’s worked worldwide and recommends a three-part plan:

1. Expand roads with underground tunnels and elevated structures.
2. Use pricing to keep traffic flowing.
3. Pay for new projects with private-sector financing instead of taxes.

That plan can help Chicago or any other city bust congestion and boost economic growth.

Approximately 4.30 minutes

Written and produced by Ted Balaker. Field producer: Paul Detrick, Camera: Jim Epstein and Alex Manning.

Visit Reason.tv for downloadable versions of this and all our videos, and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube Channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.

And it is a privilege that has been badly abused for years; U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics show that public sector employees, many of them unionized, make nearly $40 an hour in combined wages and benefits versus roughly $27.50 for those in the private sector.

So I applaud what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin, but I actually feel he didn’t go far enough. All his Budget Repair Bill is doing is addressing the public sector unions’ right to collectively bargain over pensions and health care. I think it would have been nice to address the right to collectively bargain for wages, and here’s why: at the end of the day, the public sector unions are not collectively bargaining for a greater share of earnings, as do the private sector unions. They are bargaining to get a bigger slice of the pie of tax dollars, which the government has taken from the American taxpayer.

Now to be clear: paying a certain amount of taxes is a part of being involved in an organized civilization. If you want to make sure you have roads and national defense, you’re going to have to pay taxes. But that being said, taxes are removed through a threat of force from the taxpayers by the government (yes, I mean force. Try not paying property or income taxes and see what happens). So the government is run off of money earned in the private sector. Government does not create jobs; when there are reports of more jobs, but they’re all government jobs, the government is not creating anything: it is merely funding even more government jobs off the backs of the private sector. Which compounds the problem because by taking capital from the private sector to create government jobs, you’re not creating jobs that create more capital, as private sector jobs do.

So, public sector unions, unlike their private sector union counterparts, are not creating more capital. Do they provide services for the public good? Absolutely. Are they creating capital? Absolutely not.

So here you have public sector unions negotiating for more pay in tough times, soaking more from the already overburdened American taxpayer. I keep hearing this drivel of, “Well if Walker is expecting the unions to make sacrifices, is he going to ask others to make sacrifices by increasing taxes?” Memo to those saying that (Mika Brzezinski, I’m thinking of you): The American taxpayer has been gouged for years, and years, and years, by higher taxes, and I’m not talking just income taxes. I’m talking the hidden taxes on gas, food, etc. Yeah, add up all your taxes sometime and you’ll realize you’re probably paying well over 50%, sometimes 60% or more of your wages, in taxes. So you’ve kind of already done your part.

I’m at the point where I feel like the public sector unions, and their partners in crime, their allied elected officials, are like vampires on the American public, sucking the very blood out of them. Worse, they are dumb vampires.

Smart vampires suck just enough blood out to satiate themselves and then leave the victim alive so they can hit them again for a quick infusion down the road. The public sector unions and elected officials haven’t quite learned that lesson and keep sucking the blood out of the American people. At some point, there ain’t going to be any more blood to suck, and then everyone is dead.

And a word on the unions allied officials. These officials, standing between the taxpayer and the public sector unions, are supposed to serve the American taxpayer. It’s a little something called a government of “We the People,” with power originating from the people. But in fact the elected officials are serving the public sector unions because the unions collect millions off the forced-dues from government employees and then reward the officials, their “bosses,” by funding their reelection campaigns. This is precisely backward from how this country was meant to work. It was originally meant to work like this: power originates from the American people, is given to elected officials, who then manage the bureaucrats and federal employees, on behalf of the people, i.e. taxpayers.

Now we have this bizarre scenario where the public sector unions have the power to dictate to the elected officials, who then dictate to the American people. The only way any of that last scenario makes sense is if you detach yourself from reality and enter a land of unicorns and pixie dust.

Now I know for most, none of this is a revelation at all. But it does defy logic: ultimately what we’re doing by increasing benefits and pay for public sector unions is removing capital from the private sector (i.e. us) via taxes and crushing our economy in a time when we actually need the private sector to create more jobs.

What Scott Walker, and many others are doing is appealing to common sense, especially in tough economic times. I have no problem at all with public sector unions making the equivalent wages and benefits that their private sector counterparts do. Of course that means a shaving down by about 30% on the combined wages and benefits of the public sector unions, but it has to be done. And I applaud those officials who are willing to step up to the plate and do it. The American people are applauding and cheering you on.