Sen. Mitch McConnell, sacrificing public employees and old people for millionaires. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
Senate Republicans are trying to change the subject on the payroll tax cut. Now that Republicans have
decided that they have to support this break for the middle class or appear totally out of touch, they have to figure out how to keep on protecting millionaires. Democrats are proposing a modest tax on income over $1 million. Republicans want to
punish public employees.
Senate Republicans are coalescing around a plan that would continue the current salary freeze for all federal workers and lawmakers to pay for an extension of the payroll tax cut favored by President Barack Obama and other Democrats, a GOP senator told POLITICO on Wednesday.
Obama instituted a two-year federal pay freeze that began Jan. 1, and the GOP plan would extend it either one or two years, saving about $100 billion. The idea for a federal pay freeze was discussed by the presidential Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission, and was later part of the deficit supercommittee negotiations that collapsed last week.
"It’s the idea that private sector employees around the country have had their pay freeze. Many have been laid off," said the GOP senator, who noted that the pay freeze was discussed in Tuesday's closed-door caucus meeting. "And at the federal level, the salary relative to private sector salaries has crept up."
Right, those fat-cat federal employees have seen their salaries creep up so that they are now trailing their private sector counterparts by just 26.3 percent. And, in fact, that pay gap has increased in the past year. Go figure. What's more, the 2010 law that implemented the pay freeze continues through 2012.
But wait, it gets better:
The senator, who asked for anonymity to discuss a closed door meeting, said the pay freeze could be coupled with a means testing plan to limit Medicare and Social Security benefits for those earning more than $1 million a year.
This is a diversionary tactic for Republicans, and just one more effort to protect the millionaires at the expense of the middle class, while weakening Social Security and Medicare while they're at it. They know they're losing on the politics of taxes and are trying to change the subject by, as usual, beating up on public employees. Oh, and old people.
