I am so glad to see this op-ed by Paul Krugman in the NY Times--
Freezing Out Hope--because it so eloquently expresses my own thoughts and feelings about why proposing a pay freeze on federal employees is a completely ridiculous and unhelpful move in the oh-so-popular deficit reduction goal everyone seems to be courting (while ignoring the more immediate dire straights our economy continues to find itself in, despite assertions that the recession is technically over).
This is an especially direct section (emphasis mine):
The truth is that America’s long-run deficit problem has nothing at all to do with overpaid federal workers. For one thing, those workers aren’t overpaid. Federal salaries are, on average, somewhat less than those of private-sector workers with equivalent qualifications. And, anyway, employee pay is only a small fraction of federal expenses; even cutting the payroll in half would reduce total spending less than 3 percent.
So freezing federal pay is cynical deficit-reduction theater. It’s a (literally) cheap trick that only sounds impressive to people who don’t know anything about budget realities. The actual savings, about $5 billion over two years, are chump change given the scale of the deficit.
Deficit reduction is a very real need and a problem to be addressed in a serious manner by our Congress. However, going after federal employee salaries just serves to stir up old fears about supposedly "lazy" government workers making too much money while the "rest of America" works hard. I can't say very much about my experience in this area, but I can say with absolute certainty that there are many hard-working federal employees who quietly do their jobs excellently and efficiently every day, employees with a comfortable yet modest income who don't deserve to be penalized for the irresponsible decisions of those on Wall Street and in Congress.
True
