Add Insult to Tax Injury

When Obama took office, one of the first things he did was to announce a pay freeze for all White House employees making more than $100,000 per year.  However we found out last fall that even with that pay freeze 74% of the over 300 White House staff got on-average a 9% pay raise and the number of federal employees making more than $150,000/year has doubled under this administration.  I’m not saying they aren’t worth it (OK, maybe I would say it if I knew just what these people did other than kiss butt and shine shoes) but how much disdain for the suffering of millions of American citizens does this show?

You do know, don’t you, that your unemployment payments are taxable as wages, so your unemployment benefits help pay these possibly overpaid folks.  Even with falling new unemployment claims, more than 9% of us (seasonably adjusted, of course) are out of work.  Another 20% are underemployed with cut hours or only holding temporary or part-time jobs, and untold numbers have simply given up looking.  Yet Obama has increased the number of federal workers making over $150,000 twenty-fold and gives his staff a 9% pay raise.  Even if you are employed, did you get a 9% pay raise last year?  Are you even making 9% more than you were two years ago?

In so many ways, Obama’s domestic policies are like vampires sucking the life out of the economy step by step.  These policies punish producers, make the business climate too uncertain so that potential employers are not sure what his policies will to to them.  They could hire people but then if ObamaCare slaps punitive expenses on their businesses, they’ll have to lay people off just to keep even.  And, by the way, when an employer lays people off, his unemployment insurance premiums rise, which punishes him even more for having tried to give some folks jobs.

I encourage the Republican-controlled House to implement sound policies that are economic-growth friendly.

I hope the Debt Commission and Congress are watching. Roll back federal pay to the 2008 level and eliminate automatic pay raises through the Cost of Living Adjustments.  Those of us who don’t suckle at the teat of the federal government don’t get those kind of automatic pay raises.  If federal employees don’t like it, they can do what the rest of us do.  They can quit and try to get a real job in the private sector.

Nevertheless, let’s go back to the topic of this entry.  If there wasn’t a pay freeze, how much would these people have gotten?  Where can I apply for one of these jobs?  Sounds like “all animals are created equal.  It’s just that some are more equal than others,” to borrow from George Orwell.