It is Time to Deflate Federal Salaries
A recent trend in Washington, D.C. is to spend enormous amounts of taxpayer money on programs that politicians sell to the public as absolutely necessary and important. That approach led to swift passage of the $700 billion TARP program, the $862 billion stimulus program and the $300 billion mortgage assistance program. These programs have been expensive, ineffective and inefficient while all paid for with money the government had to borrow from taxpayers, as well as their children and grandchildren.
This has all led to a record deficit of $12.4 trillion that boils down to $42,000 for every taxpayer, which does not even include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security. Amid these glaring examples of fiscal irresponsibility, Congress and the Administration have continued another practice that will result in even higher deficits: overpaying federal employees.
A March 8, 2010 USA Today story illustrated just how far the feds have gone in overpaying their employees: Average federal salaries exceed average private-sector pay in 83 percent of comparable occupations. The article stated that the median annual salary for a typical federal worker is 20 percent more than a private-sector worker in the same occupation. In one extreme example, a federally paid cook makes an average of $38,400, while a private sector cook makes $23,279, a taxpayer funded difference of $15,121, or 65 percent.
Unfortunately, President Obama’s recent actions tell taxpayers he doesn’t seem to be concerned about overpaying for federal jobs. In 2009, when he was first sworn into office, the President froze the salaries of all senior White House employees making more than $100,000 annually. Unfortunately, this only impacted about 130 federal officials. In 2010, when given a chance to make a bigger impact, the President chose to freeze the pay of only 1,200 highly paid political appointees and not all federal workers. More recently, the Obama Administration proposed a budget for 2011 that provides for federal salaries to increase by 1.4 percent. If the President were to freeze salaries of all federal workers, excluding postal workers, that would impact two million civilian employees. A salary cut would have an even greater impact. According to February 3, 2010 Thompson Reuters column by Martin Hutchinson, “Rolling federal employee pay back to where it was in 1998 relative to the private sector and shifting state and local government pay back to 2005 relative levels would save $116 billion annually from government costs.”
Congress is not much better. In a December 8, 2009 Washington Post article about pay increases for federal employees, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said, “This provision is critical to bringing federal pay in line with the private sector and enabling the federal government to compete for high quality talent.” If Rep. Hoyer truly believed in this logic of federal/private pay parity, he would support a cut in federal salaries.
The fact that President Obama is not serious about curbing the exorbitant salaries of federal workers is not surprising; those who work for President Obama are even less apologetic. In March 9, 2010 Government Executive.com article, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag defended the salaries of federal employees by saying that the federal workforce is more highly educated than the private sector workforce. He went on to say that federal workers have also been on the job longer, and as people get more experienced pay tends to increase.
Anyone who has had a job understands this logic, as tortured as it may be. But what does not make sense is that at the end of the day the federal government does not have “profits” it can use to pay its workers more money. The government must raise taxes from the hardworking public to pay these increases. Many businesses and individuals are paying less in taxes because they are not earning as much. With declining tax revenue, the federal government has fewer resources to pay its workers and either must borrow or tax people even more heavily to meet its payroll. It is clear to those who balance their checkbook every month that the federal government cannot afford to waste any more money.
Congress and the Obama Administration can cut back on spending by freezing all federal salaries. At a time when the private sector is cutting back and being forced to live within its means, the federal government should follow suit.
— MacMillin Slobodien
