Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 11/13/2010 8:44:00 AM PST by upchuck
Did you get a raise last year? Seventy-four percent of White House staffers did, according a Gawker analysis of the White House's annual salary reports to Congress. Probably for the great job they're doing with the economy.
Earlier this week, USA Today published an analysis of the federal workforce showing that it pays to work for the government: The number of feds earning more than $150,000 per year has increased tenfold since 2005, and the number earning above $180,000 has increased twentyfold. That prompted us to take a look at White House salaries, and it turns out that working for Barack Obama is not a bad gig.
White House Staffers Got a Bigger Raise Than You Did Last YearObama famously instituted a salary freeze for all White House staffers earning more than $100,000 on his first day in office because "during this period of economic emergency, families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington."
But there wasn't a lot of belt-tightening for the rest of the staff: We crunched the numbers and found that, of the 344 White House employees who were listed on the payroll in both White House's 2009 and 2010 salary reports, 253—or 74%—got raises in 2010. And among that lucky overwhelming majority, the average raise was 9%. And plenty of people making more than $100,000 a year did get a raise as long as a title change came with it.
That's a lot better than most people did! According to the compensation-tracking firm Hewitt Associates, base salaries for executives and salaried workers went up 2.4% over the same time period. And John Challenger, the CEO of the executive consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, says "nine percent is double what we'd see for most executives, and even more for the rank and file. In 2009, companies were in recession at least half the year. Raises were much more in the range of 2% to 3%, maybe 4% to 5% for executives." And while Challenger says its not unusual for companies to reward 75% of staffers with annual raises, last year many firms skipped the practice. "Many more companies than normal cut raises altogether," he says.
I suggest legislation that ties Congressional and Federal salaries to this same COLA.
If you want to see something sickening - take a look at government employees at the state level. In Wisconsin, more than 10% of the labor force is in State government. Look up your own state at the US Census site:
http://www.census.gov/govs/apes/
I remember my father recounting that during the Depression the entire Federal government, from President to legislators to federal employees to military, took a 50% pay cut! Can anyone verify that?
I need the link to the government site that details the amount of retirement dollars presently paid each month to retired congressmen and retired senators. Can anybody help me with this?
We all, in effect, work for the government ... it’s just that we all don’t get paid like it. Most of us work for the government 4 to 6 months or more every year when you add up federal, state, local, sales, phone, internet, “sin”, and property taxes, plus licensing and registration fees. And when you see the salaries and benefits government employees make, and Nancy Pelosi’s plane rides, Pentagon and HHS waste, etc., you know why.
I like the idea Glenn Beck put out on his show yesterday:
The average military salary is $22,000.00 therefore no elected official should be paid more than the people who put their lives on the line for the country. After all public service should not be a career. A second effect would be that this would end the need for term limits since nobody would want to make a career out of this.
The average citizens salary is $50,000.00 therefore no government employee should be paid more than the people they are working for. In addition government pensions benefits and medical care should be the same as their private sector counterparts.
He gave the example of Charlie Rangel. Rangel served a distinguished career in the army. He went into congress 50 years ago with no real net worth. Now he's a multi-millionaire. It's obscene that this can happen.
“For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
After that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters. It did not seem strange to learn that the pigs had bought themselves a wireless set, were arranging to install a telephone, and had taken out subscriptions to John Bull, TitBits, and the Daily Mirror. It did not seem strange when Napoleon was seen strolling in the farmhouse garden with a pipe in his mouth-no, not even when the pigs took Mr. Jones’s clothes out of the wardrobes and put them on, Napoleon himself appearing in a black coat, ratcatcher breeches, and leather leggings, while his favourite sow appeared in the watered silk dress which Mrs. Jones had been used to wear on Sundays.”
Animal Farm
Congress also voted themselves a raise. They should tie their raises to the same amount that Social Security gets.
To paraphrase Limbaugh and my old tagline, “how can a man with such big ears be so tone deaf?”
This is bigger than COLA. This is over all pay grade inflation. Most government staffs are really flat pyramids. The highest paid person in that office has a number of people below them that start at a grade just below his.
Over the past few years they have been kicking up the grades and moving a lot of positions into the SES (Senior Executive Service) where they make more than Congressmen.
The FAA used to have 3 SES positions, now they have literally hundreds. They basically made a bunch of GS-15s into SES-1s, but you know the 14s went to 15 and the 13s went to 14, etc.
DHS has exloded in the number of staff positions it has built in the past couple years. These aren't line agents, but regional staffs that have been injected in between the existing layers of bureaucracy. They also pushed through a grade increase for line CBP Officers and Border Patrol Agents. Now, without doing anything but showing up you journey up to GS-12 plus law enforcement pay. That is about $89k a year for a BPA, maybe more for CBPO's because they do lots of involuntary overtime. You know that the supervisors that used to be 12s are going to 13, etc.
These are all structural costs, much more destructive than a COLA.
Yeah, I want an air traffic controller that is paid the same as a lead manager at McDonald's.
The HUGE increases in the budgets of the various agencies (the EPA budge increased by 128% in just two years) was used to fill no-show jobs and to pad the salaries of federal employees.
And one of the worst things about the recent committee to reduce the deficit was that they didn’t recommend cutting the budge of a single agency and out of the hundreds and hundreds of federal agencies they could find only one that they could do without.
Who ever said, in the long run, that government's exist for the benefits of the governed?
Most governments, and now ours, exist to benefit the ruling class - those who make the rules.
Proof statement?
Let's see:
It wasn't that far back that Congress was forced to follow the laws like the rest of us.
Remember the House Bank scandal?
Tax breaks for doing their job.
Free first class travel around the world on “fact finding” trips (family and staff included).
This year's Presidential vacations and travels.
The wealthiest counties in the nation, based on income, are the ones that surround Washington D.C.
Congress Critter health care programs and on-site facilities.
A retirement program that is beyond platinum - perhaps diamond encrusted could be used.
The ability to use the entire Federal Government to silence people who oppose you - IRS, FIB, SS, et al.
And that is just the beginning of the list.
With the hike in health insurance, I got a pay cut.
I worked as the Navy Security Officer (Equivalent of provost marshal positio) as a GS11 in Panama and the most I ever made was $40K a year and that was with some over time, which believe me was very rare. I do not know who is making $150K a year in the Federal govt but it damn sure aint the worker bees.
If theyreceived even a 1 penny pay raise, they received more than we did...NO COLA’s for SS or Navy retirement. In fact because they fiddled with the IRS codes, we lost $120 in the Navy retirement, so we had a TAX HIKE last year.
And if they don’t renew the Bush Tax Cuts, we will be hit by a $1,200 tax hike...not to mention the increased fees we saw at the state level and property taxes.
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
They had a better year than we did...oh, wait...
True, that is a little extreme but some things should be privatized and other jobs should be brought in line with their private sector counterparts. The part about congress making no more than our military plus having to go through the same health care (Tricare) as the soldier on the front lines does sound good.
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