Ungrateful, fat-cat feds in denial … again

If you want to get the blood circulating inside the Beltway, you come out with a study that shows federal workers are either grossly underpaid or grossly overpaid. Underpaid is for the federal family. Overpaid is for just about everybody else. Ideally, you release your study every two-to-three years. That gives it the appearance of being fresh, which it is sort of is, while confirming whatever viewpoint/bias you have. You can say ‘I told you so,’ even if you are only talking to yourself.

Groups representing federal workers, managers and senior professionals say there is no doubt. Feds, like NASA rocket scientists, analysts with the Pentagon and CIA, computer types at the National Security Agency and researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control would be worth their weight in gold in the private sector. And there are studies to prove it.

But if you want a larger readership — as in everybody who does not work for the government — your study should (and usually does) show that federal workers are grossly overcompensated compared to folks in the real world. Conservative, highly respected think tanks tend to reach the conclusion that feds are overpaid, in some cases drastically, compared to people who do not work for the government.

For more on the latest pay “gap” study, click here. You may want to sit down while you are reading it.

In the last few years, Democrats (with some exceptions) have been the champions of federal workers. Republicans (with some exceptions) not so much.

But the founding fathers of the Feds Are Overpaid Club were both Democrats who first served as governors, Jimmy Carter (in Georgia) and Bill Clinton (in Arkansas), then became presidents and tried to put the lid on federal pay raises with some degree of success.

Team Carter said nobody could get a handle on federal pay without taking into account total compensation. That is the value of things like paid leave, accumulation of sick leave, number of holidays, employer contributions to health premiums (72 percent) and, of course, the jewel-in-the-crown civil service retirement system. It guaranteed workers pensions (annuities) based on salary and service. CSRS workers who had 40 years of federal/military service could retire on a starting annuity of 80 percent of their highest three-year average salary. On inflation-protected benefits.

Later on, Clinton took office and tried to deny a pay raise due to feds thanks to a brand new, bipartisan law called FEPCA. Passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, it was to guarantee feds a series of annual January pay raises that would close the official government gap, which at the time, said feds on average were paid nearly 30 percent less than their counterparts at Walmart, Sears, Boeing, GEICO and other places. Clinton proposed a zero pay raise that was overturned by a coalition of prominent politicians, Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Frank Wolf (R-Va.), whose districts were full of feds and their families. During the Clinton and George W. Bush years, they managed to get feds bigger raises than proposed by the president, but smaller than those promised by FEPCA.

Both Carter and Clinton (not to mention their staffs) were said to be astounded by Washington-area federal salaries compared to what they had paid their people — or themselves — in Georgia and Arkansas. Carter believed that the only way to get a true picture of federal vs. private-sector pay was to look at the value of perks, as well as pay.

What next? Expect a report which shows that federal workers — especially in upper-level jobs — are grossly underpaid compared to their counterparts in the private sector.

Then after a decent interval, there will be yet another report blasting high-paid feds.

It goes with the territory.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

The orange is a hybrid of the pomelo and the mandarin.

Source: Wikipedia

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