The Los Angeles Times reports that President Obama is set to propose a two-year wage freeze for federal workers as a gesture toward reigning in the deficit. It's an empty gesture.
The White House estimates that the proposed freeze would save $5 billion dollars between now and 2012. Sounds great, right? Except that the federal deficit is $1.3 trillion. For those of you who are a little rusty on your sixth grade math skills, 5 billion represents 0.38% of 1.3 trillion. So it's the equivalent of giving a starving man a Tic Tac.
This is nothing more than a pander to those on the right demanding "austerity." It also feeds into their disdain for government jobs and anyone who holds them. This attitude has even crept its way into the mainstream media. How often have we heard statements such as, "150,000 jobs were created, but 80,000 of them were government jobs." As if government jobs were somehow less worthy or don't "count." A government job is still a job. It's still someone earning a salary, and using that salary to pay for goods and services. What difference does it make who signs the paycheck?
In fact, government jobs are often better in many ways than their private industry counterparts. They usually have good benefits, pensions, and union protection. It's almost as if conservatives object to workers having those advantages. Oh wait, they do.
So now the administration is talking about effectively cutting the pay of approximately two million federal workers. And make no mistake, this would be a pay cut. "Freeze" is just a way of sugar coating it. But unless they also "freeze" the cost of living, the end result will be that federal workers will be making less in real dollars in 2012 than they do now.
Except not all federal employees will be affected. The 3 million active and reserve military personnel will not be included in the pay freeze. Now, I'm not suggesting that enlisted men and women and low-ranking officers should have their wages frozen -- they do a difficult job for much less than they would be earning in the civilian world. But there are flag officers who make over $200,000 a year. If we're going to cut people's pay as gesture toward "fiscal responsibility," then I think it would be entirely appropriate for the higher-ups in the chain of command to bear some of the burden.
Or better yet, instead of saving a token amount on the backs of federal workers, why not slash the bloated military budget? Representatives Barney Frank and Ron Paul, strange political bedfellows as ever there were, have called for cuts in defense spending that would save $1 trillion dollars over ten years. The fact of the matter is that our military budget is nearly six and a half times that of China, the next biggest spender. We could literally cut our military spending in half and still be outspending them over three to one. But that would mean challenging one of the sacred cows of the far right. I can just see the flag-draped indignation now. It's the military! They're AMERICAN HEROES!
The deficit is a problem. It's not the problem that the far right and their Tea Party toadies make it out to be, but it is a problem. And it needs to be addressed. But taking money out of even more workers' pockets is not the answer.