Before you read this in the interest of full disclosure, I am an employee of the United States Government. I can't figure out how to change the time it says I posted a blog entry, but it is currently 9:40 PM central time. I am writing this on my home computer on my own time.
This week President Obama announced to trim the defecit, he planned to freeze the salaries of all employees within the civil service (antiquated term). Below you will find some informational sources:
White House press release
WSJ article
Washington Post Article
The plan is expected to save $28 billion over the next five years. That is a near unfathomable amount of money for anyone other than an economist or billionaire. That is what the President is relying on. Yeah $28 billion sounds like a lot of money. It is. $5.4 billion, the approximate average yearly savings, is also a huge amount of money. But the problem is the budget deficit this year alone was $1.3 trillion. Because math makes my head hurt lets just do some estimates and say the pay freeze will save $30 billion over the next five years. That means that the entire savings is only 2% of the yearly deficit. The $5.4 billion per year is only .4% of the FY2010 deficit (these numbers come from the Congressional Budget Office). But every little bit helps right?
According to Federaljobs.net, the US Government is the nation's largest employer employing approximately 2% of the working men and women in the United States. Let's not forget, these employees are the ones that you file income taxes with, you get social security from, protect our borders, treat our veterans, and perform many other tasks we take for granted. So to save .4% the plan is to essentially cut the salaries of a full 2% of the workforce? What a great idea! Also, if you think that person at the IRS or the Social Security office was a pain to deal with before, how do you think they will act when they know they will not be getting a cost of living adjustment? That is likely what this will affect, by the way. If the President really wanted to minimize the punishment of Federal Employees and save some money, he would have done this for the last two years when inflation was stagnent. In that case the COLA really was just a raise. But it is meant to keep salaries consistent in the face of inflation. With inflation creeping back into the economy, not having the COLA would make the effective salary of each employee lower.
Of course the first sentence of the White House press release blames the past administration for the deficit. There is no question the Bush government could have been more fiscally conservative, but does the President not remember the ARRA or the health bill that nobody wanted and less people read? I guess those didn't add any spending. I know what they did add- extended benefits for people who are unemployed. Intelligent people may disagree over whether this provision was proper. However, everyone should be outraged by the message sent. Unemployed people should be given benefits but let's cut raises for Federal WORKERS. Now, the President did note the first salaries he froze were for Senior White House staff. Logically, this would have been an irrelevant publicity stunt. If it was one of the first things he did, that would mean his senior staff had just started their jobs. So, why would they get raises? You don't hire someone and immediately give them a raise.
So, that brings me to the actual point of this blog entry. I think the President needs to be rewarded (see you thought this was meant negatively! shame!). He already won the Nobel Peace Prize so, his next awards would have to be of equal or higher esteem. First, because the President managed to get the ARRA and Obamacare passed with apparently spending no money, I think he should be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics (its a shame he missed it this ear). Now, by freezing the salaries of his senior staff, he really jumped on a grenade for all of us. Also, let's not forget, as Commander-in-Chief, he is technically in the military. Therefore, I propose he give himself the Medal of Honor. Who's with me!?!
-J
No comments:
Post a Comment