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The Washington Post has a sympathetic article today on federal workers who consider themselves unfair victims of the sequester. Unfortunately, the article does not consider data and evidence, instead characterizing criticism of federal worker compensation as mere assertion, jealous emotionalism, or politicking. Federal employees are upset about “perceptions” of government work, according to the people interviewed for the story. They have to defend themselves from “arguments” about excessive compensation and short working hours. They are “the target of popular rage” because the private sector is “frustrated, even jealous.” There is a “drumbeat” of negativity, “ritual denunciation,” and “bashing” of federal...

Daniel Halper at Weekly Standard quotes Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions who really goes after the president and the Democrats for their refusal to negotiate on the sequester: "Replacing the sequester would require the President to save $85 billion out of a $3,500 billion federal budget. One would think that any President would leap at the opportunity to make government more effective and responsive. But what does the President do instead? He says Republicans are 'cutting vital services for children' in order to 'benefit the well-off and well-connected.' This has been the strategy now for years: block any attempt to reform...

-snip- For most of their lives, federal workers in Mantua say, having “United States Treasury” atop their paycheck meant security, pride and a sense of mission. Things change: Now it means having to defend yourself against arguments, from strangers and even from your own relatives, that you’re an overpaid and underworked leech.

The House approved a bill to rescind the executive order President Obama signed last week that ended the pay freeze on federal employees, which meant that some federal workers would be getting a raise—including members of Congress. A number of lawmakers spoke out about the absurdity of the pay increase and timing of the move. Rep. Michele Bachmann said in a statement, “This executive order was not requested by Congress and we should reject it. We have a spending problem in our country and we should be looking for areas to cut spending. At a time when families across the...

So, Obama is fixated - to the point of a "religious" Crusading zealotry - with raising taxes on the rich? (Even if it means reducing total tax revenues by stifling the economy, sending us back into an ever-steady recession.) OK. So, even if it won't clear the deficit, why don't we " raise taxes on the rich" ... by passing an immediate, across the board "progressive" tax on all non-defense federal employees and retirees? Anyone making a total of over $150,000.00 per year (bonus and salary and retirements) gets a 15% tax. Anyone making a total of over $100,000.00 per...

The Federal-Postal Coalition -- a group representing more than two dozen federal employee unions -- pleaded with Congress on Monday to spare their members in any deal related to the "fiscal cliff." Federal workers, the coalition wrote in a letter, have contributed more than their fair share toward reducing the debt and are the only group that has been targeted so heavily. “Federal and postal employees and their families are hardworking, middle-class Americans who are struggling during these tough times just like other Americans,” the group wrote. “No other group has been asked to financially contribute the way they have,...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The retired, longtime president of the National Border Patrol Union was indicted Thursday for diverting thousands of dollars in union funds for personal use, federal prosecutors said. The indictment says Bonner used the position he held for more than two decades to obtain payment for supposedly union-related work and travel that were in fact personal. "These false claims included periods of time when Bonner was actually visiting his mistress in Chicago or family members, as well as trips to attend non-union activities such as hockey games and other sporting events," the indictment.

When racial tensions flared in Sanford, a league of secretive peacemakers reached out to the city's spiritual and civic leaders to help cool heated emotions after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in February. When civil-rights organizers wanted to demonstrate, these federal workers taught them how to peacefully manage crowds. They even arranged a police escort for college students to ensure safe passage for their 40-mile march from Daytona Beach to Sanford to demand justice. As national figures and sign-waving protesters grabbed the spotlight after Trayvon's death, federal workers from a little-known branch of the Department of Justice labored...

The federal worker pay freeze might be over. The White House will propose a 0.5% pay increase for federal workers in its 2013 budget proposal, an official from the Office of Management and Budget said Friday. Federal pay has been frozen since December 2010, when Congress signed off on an Obama administration proposal to freeze federal worker pay for two years in the name of deficit reduction. The administration is expected to release its new budget in February, and any proposed increase in federal pay will require the approval of Congress. Even if it does become law, the 0.5% increase...

The White House will propose a 0.5 percent pay increase for civilian federal employees as part of its 2013 budget proposal, according to two senior administration officials familiar with the plans. The modest across-the-board pay jump would be the first increase for federal workers since before a two-year freeze began in late 2010. Raises for within-grade step increases and promotions have continued during the freeze. The proposal, which requires congressional approval, differs from Republican plans supported by lawmakers and presidential candidates that would freeze basic pay rates for one more year. Some of those plans also call for denying within-grade...

My family and I went to the VA hospital for Christmas services, during which the kindly chaplain said goodbye to the veterans to whom he had been ministering. Like a record number of federal government employees, he has decided to retire this year. Because the federal workforce is older than the general population, a certain number of retirements are to be expected. Yet according to the actuaries at the federal Office of Personal Management, workforce age isn’t enough to account for the surge in federal retirements. It’s not hard to see what other factors are driving federal government employees to...

With all the talk these days all around the world of fiscal consolidation, it may interest you to know that the US still has an extremely small percentage of its workers employed by the public sector, at least compared to Europe. The largest? According to Citi's Tobias Levkovich, the answer is China, where nearly 50% of workers are somehow in the government sector. Granted, this could include state-owned-enterprises, which remain a large chunk of the Chinese economy, but either way it does confirm that for Chinese employment to remain solid, Beijing will have to keep its foot on the gas...

President Barack Obama has signed an executive order directing the federal government to design a new strategy for hiring, promoting and keeping workers of diverse backgrounds. The three-page order released Thursday directs the head of the Office of Personnel Management, a deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget and two other agencies to develop the strategy within 90 days. Agencies then have 120 days to implement it. An Office of Personnel Management report says that in fiscal year 2010, the federal workforce was 66.2 percent white, 17.7 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic, 5.6 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, 1.8 percent...

The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes. The 1,800-employee Federal Communications Commission and the 1,200-employee Federal Trade Commission didn’t lay off or fire a single employee last year. The SBA had no layoffs, six firings and 17 deaths in its 4,000-employee workforce. When job security is at a premium, the...

EW ORLEANS, La. – The American Enterprise Institute, a D.C.-based think tank, recently released a working paper which finds that federal employees receive a salary premium of 14 percent, a benefits premium of 63 percent, and extra job security worth 17 percent of pay. That makes the total federal compensation premium approximately 61 percent. The study’s authors estimate that if federal employee compensation was reduced to private levels, taxpayers could save $77 billion per year. The BEA website highlights four factors that contribute to the wage disparity. First, private sector employee salaries range from minimum wage workers to the highest...

Republican leaders in Congress think so, and they are calling for an overhaul of the entire federal pay system to help slash government spending. Democrats and other defenders of the government work force say federal workers are actually underpaid compared with their private counterparts. A closer look at the data shows that both sides have a point but that supporters of federal workers are a bit closer to reality.... That argument is backed up by a 2002 study of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It found that federal salaries for most professional and administrative jobs lagged well behind compensation offered...

When the Wisconsin General Assembly voted to pass Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill, the Democratic legislators made themselves indistinguishable from the protesters surrounding the assembly floor. They wore the same pro-union orange T-shirts. They behaved in the same sophomoric way, breaking out in a noisy demonstration. They chanted the same ubiquitous word: "Shame!" They might as well have brought guitars onto the floor for a Woody Guthrie sing-along and touted "Walker = Hitler" signs. In Wisconsin, it's less that Democrats act to protect a special interest than that they belong to a special interest. A complete identification has long...

<p>“I'm sure the President knows that most federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and benefits while our plan allows it for base pay. And I'm sure the President knows that the average federal worker pays twice as much for health insurance as what we are asking for in Wisconsin. At least I would hope he knows these facts.</p>

Obama Administration Encourages Federal Workers to Stay Home to Lessen Carbon Footprint on Nation’s Capital (CNSNews.com) - Thousands of federal workers stayed home for at least some part of this week after pledging through teleworkexchange.com not to commute to work to mark Telework Week, Feb. 14-18.The Web site, which acts as a platform for federal agencies and other interested parties to promote and implement telecommuting, claims that 39,141 people – much of them federal workers in the D.C. metro area – pledged to work at least some of the five-day workweek from home. The amount “saved” by cutting commuting costs...

Today Barack Obama froze the pay for overpaid federal employees today...Federal workers make twice as much as workers in the private sector...Lock it in!