Oh the irony! On the same day Obama’s debt commission shows the nation some of the drastic cuts that will be needed to bring our out of control debt under control, this gem of a story comes out.
USA Today: The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
The fast-growing pay of federal employees has captured the attention of fiscally conservative Republicans who won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in last week's elections. Already, some lawmakers are planning to use the lame-duck session that starts Monday to challenge the president's plan to give a 1.4% across-the-board pay raise to 2.1 million federal workers.[…]
Federal salaries have grown robustly in recent years, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Office of Personnel Management data. Key findings:
•Government-wide raises. Top-paid staff have increased in every department and agency. The Defense Department had nine civilians earning $170,000 or more in 2005, 214 when Obama took office and 994 in June.
•Long-time workers thrive. The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the government for 15 to 24 years. Since 2005, average salaries for this group climbed 25% compared with a 9% inflation rate.
•Physicians rewarded. Medical doctors at veterans hospitals, prisons and elsewhere earn an average of $179,500, up from $111,000 in 2005.
Federal workers earning $150,000 or more make up 3.9% of the workforce, up from 0.4% in 2005.
If Washington wants all Americans to accept drastic cuts across the board, they are going to have to lead by example and start making some drastic cuts of their own. To fail to do otherwise is an invitation to revolt!
Via: Memeorandum
Via: USA Today
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4 comments:
I wonder how of those doubled numbered ones are completely incompetent or unneeded affrimative action hires by this racist administration?
Hey, some of us are worth our pay!
It's not surprising when lawyers, accountants, PhDs, and managers in high cost areas make over $100K. When a bus driver, secretary, letter carrier, or information booth representative makes over $100K, there's a problem.
There's also a problem when public employees can spike their pensions, earn more from overtime than their base pay, cash out unlimited leave, pay no copays or deductibles, etc.
Public sector unions need to be banned. There's nothing protecting taxpayers from the gifts granted by politicians.
It would be interesting to see how this is treated by the politicians- If they decide to play stupid and simply freeze current pay rates, then they are in on the fix as much as those who increased the pay so radically-
They would need to cut pay back to levels before these outrageous increases and possibly cut them by more than that- and as some commentator said this week, they would do well by cutting their own staff people (Congressmen and WH) as a gesture of goodwill for many struggling Americans.
Yea, I know everyone thinks they absolutely deserve their pay, especially if they feel a need to defend it, but the honest truth is that government employees (and union employees to some extent) need to get more in line with what average America is. Just because the pay has come out of our larger collective pocket does not entitle any of our employees to help themselves to a little more from that much larger pocket (the little is sarcasm- consider that average federal and average private sector empoyees make...include benefits/pension and it is not even moderate)-
Simple: Cut every Government job back to the exact pay that job title received in 1999. Coincidentally, that was the last year that I got a pay raise in the private sector. If a job title did not exist in '99, get rid of it entirely. This is what is known as "a good start".
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