Tag Archives: federal workers

Sequestration cuts: Congress suffers along with the rest of us

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[Guess who will] still be getting their paychecks. (Boehner’s is $223,500). No wonder it’s so easy for the GOP to say “fuck the military, education, FAA, Meals on Wheels.” Then leave for another long weekend.

The cuts, known as sequestration, will have no impact on the president, U.S. lawmakers and other top government officials. It is especially ironic that Congress, which has the power to avert the reductions, has nothing to lose in the negotiations, said Dan Gordon, former head of federal procurement in the Obama administration. [...]

Sequestration’s effects, including the furloughs, aren’t likely to be felt for several weeks, Gordon said. Many of the reductions won’t be felt immediately because of the 30-day notice requirement for furloughs.

The automatic cuts could slice gross domestic product growth by 0.6 percent while reducing the level of employment by 750,000 jobs, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. – Bloomberg


image quickhits:

But don’t worry! Members of Congress will feel the pinch in other ways: 

Members of Congress have taken plenty of heat for the sequester. After all, the popular strain of outrage goes, they will still get their paychecks while federal workers are furloughed, and teachers get pink slips (or not).

But hold on — lawmakers are going to feel some pain, too. A letter Friday to members and their staffs announced that the sequester will mean that some entrances and checkpoints around the Capitol complex will be closed, meaning longer lines and (gasp!) wait times to enter the buildings.

Now, members probably won’t find the lines too troublesome, as they tend to breeze by security with a flash of their coveted members’ pins. But they might find some of their favorite routes curtailed because of the door closures. And even top staffers have to go through security, so they’re likely to encounter some delays.

[...] This is just insult to injury: because of the belt-tightening, congressional travel overseas (CODELs) have been grounded, and lawmakers can’t use miljets, their most favorite mode of transportation.

So some hundreds of thousands of federal workers will see a 20% pay reduction with furloughs (one unpaid day per week through September). And some elderly people might not get a Meals on Wheels, and some teachers will get laid off. And the public won’t have a fully-functioning government. But for members of Congress, there will be some inconvenience… Okay? Boehner and his crew will have to use different doors to get into their offices.  And they’ll have to stop using military jets like their own private airline company for their “fact finding” junkets. Fly commercial? Horror. Everyone suffers.

Furlough Watch: Potential Agency-by-Agency Impacts of Sequestration

Let me show you on the doll where Mr. Sequester will touch you

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Where will Mr. Sequester touch you? In these places:

Here are the top five ways that sequestration will make the nation a less healthy place:

  1. More Americans could be put at risk for foodborne illnesses.
  2. Medical researchers will be forced to delay the development of treatments that could help sick Americans.
  3. The government will have fewer resources to provide Americans with health coverage.
  4. Thousands of Americans living with mental illnesses could go untreated.
  5. Fewer Americans will get screened and treated for HIV.

Economists estimate that sequestration “most likely would reduce growth by about one-half of a percentage point in 2013,” the New York Times reports.

“Many economists are particularly critical of the arbitrary nature of the cuts, arguing that Congress could reduce annual deficits by the same amount with far less economic damage by spreading the cuts across a broader range of programs, directing them at lesser priorities or giving government agencies more discretion in how they make them.”

Travelers should brace for longer airport lines and possible flight delays after March 1 if automatic federal spending cuts reduce staffing as scheduled, government and industry officials warn. “This truly could become a nightmare for travel,” said Geoff Freeman, chief operating officer of the U.S. Travel Association. [...] The wait at security checkpoints could be an extra hour and up to three more hours at Customs and Border Protection checkpoints at the nation’s busiest airports, Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee have estimated. – Federal Times

Air Travel: An estimated $619 million would be cut from the operations and facilities and equipment accounts of the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a report by House Appropriations Committee Democrats. This could mean major flight delays and an economic hit on the millions of people who depend on air travel every day. — GovExec

  • $483 million cut from the FAA operations budget, forcing all FAA employees to be furloughed for 11 days. On any given day, that could mean that 10 percent of the FAA’s 40,000 employees could be on furlough, resulting in longer delays, reduced air-traffic control, and losses in tourism. There will also be a hiring freeze.
  • $136 million cut from the FAA’s facilities and equipment account, which helps maintain and modernize the air-traffic control infrastructure.
  • Transportation Security Administration screeners would receive a seven-day furlough.

The Environmental Protection Agency may shut down for three days in response to automatic budget cuts set to begin late next week, according to union officials involved in discussions with agency management.  [...] The EPA cuts would translate into fewer compliance inspections, less money for water quality projects, and cutbacks in research to help communities adapt to climate change, then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson wrote in a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., earlier this month. – Federal Times

U.S. Customs and Border Protection will furlough its employees for up to 14 days this year if the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester kick in on March 1, according to a letter the agency sent to union officials this week. [...] The letter said furloughs would be mandatory for all Customs and Border Protection employees, including management and workers without union representation. Notices would go out in mid-March, the agency said. — Washington Post

The automatic budget cuts set to take effect on March 1 will delay the opening of the East and West Rim drives at the Grand Canyon and reduce hours of operation at the main visitor center. At Gettysburg, 20 percent of student education programs would be eliminated this spring. — Washington Post

  • Also affected: Blue Ridge, Parkway, Mount Rainer, Glacier, Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Tetons, the National Mall, Yellowstone. (All the parks,really.)

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack described the impact of the cuts, amounting to $2 billion, in a letter that warned “these furloughs and other actions would severely disrupt our ability to provide a broad range of public services.” — Reuters

  • a nationwide shutdown of meat and poultry plants during a furlough of (meat) inspection personnel for as much as 15 days of lost production, costing over $10 billion in production losses.
  • Up to 600,000 low-income women and infants could be cut from the so-called WIC program that provides supplemental food and nutrition education if the budget cuts last for the rest of this fiscal year…
  • Closure of 670 of the Forest Service’s 19,000 recreation sites, such as campgrounds, picnic areas and trailheads, in the national forests and shorter hours at visitor centers. “This would largely occur during the peak use seasons in spring and summer,” said USDA.
  • The Forest Service would reduce its law enforcement force by 35 workers to 707 officers.
  • A work pause on the Census of Agriculture. “Data will become incomplete and will not be statistically sound for publication,” said USDA. The census, conducted every five years, provides valuable data on farm operation and output that is used in USDA’s forecasts. USDA faced repeated funding shortages for its crop and livestock reports in the past couple of years.
  • A slowdown in USDA aid to landowners wanting expert advice or matching funds to control runoff from fields and feedlots and a reduction in USDA-backed loans to farmers to buy land or cover operating costs until harvest.

More than one million workers will start taking unpaid leave on April 1 because of sequestration. – Wall Street Journal

And of course, the nearly two million federal workers facing furloughs won’t just be getting less work done to benefit all of us, they’ll be losing pay. That not only means they and their families may struggle to make ends meet, but money taken out of their local economies as they spend less. In other words: bad for federal workers, bad for people who rely on federal oversight and services, bad for the economy as a whole. — Laura Clawson

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It’s really too nice of a day to read comments, but it’s amazing how quickly the Fox-Rush base are losing their minds in the comment sections of some of these articles over simple information about what actual things will actually be affected by sequestration. It’s as if they really thought they could pick and choose what should be cut and what shouldn’t. They seem extra upset about park closures, air travel inconveniences, and the Border Patrol being affected. ‘Barry Zero’ and the ‘Dims’ are fear-mongering and guvmit can’t take taxpayer money from WeThePeople and not give us what we want! The banjo music is almost deafening. Such thinking could be classified as Narcissistic Sheeple Disorder and, unfortunately, designated as a chronic and practically incurable condition.

REMINDER: there are currently TWO PLANS to avoid the sequester:

  1. the President wants a mix of cuts and new revenue through closing loopholes [for the wealthiest taxpayers];
  2. and the Republican plan is to replace draconian cuts to military spending with draconian cuts to social insurance programs.

The sequester, furloughs and shutdowns: let people see what government really means

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Matthew Cooper believes that if there’s one silver lining to be found in the “buffoonery” of the sequester, it’s that at least it will be a teachable moment for the public:

But if agencies and departments can’t or won’t juggle their books, hey, let people see what government really means. …There’s something sobering about aircraft carriers that won’t sail and forest rangers who won’t be paid to protect. The last time I can think of such an educational moment was not the short-lived government shutdown on the ’90s, but the Oklahoma City bombing. Who died in the blast? IRS officials, Secret Service agents, General Services Administration workers. President Clinton offered a reflection on the victims, “many there who served the rest of us, who worked to help the elderly and the disabled, who worked to support our farmers and our veterans, who worked to enforce our laws and to protect us. Let us say clearly, they served us well, and we are grateful,” he said.

In 2001, looking back on the bombing, Clinton said: “And I had, like every politician, on occasion, gotten upset by some example of government waste or something the way we all do, and referred derisively to government bureaucrats. And I promised myself that I would never use those two words together for the rest of my life. I would treat those people who serve our country with respect, whether they’re in uniform, in law enforcement, firefighter, nurses, any other things.” I’m not comparing the tragedy of Oklahoma City to sequestration. One is evil; the other buffoonery. But they each have the effect of making you realize what government employees do.

Some examples of what’s at stake: 

Few corners of the federal government directly touch the public as do the 398 parks, monuments and historic sites, which draw 280 million visits a year. The system would feel the effects immediately of a $110 million slash should budget cuts take effect March 1 — from a three-week delay of Yellowstone’s spring opening to save money on snow plowing, to shuttered campgrounds and visitor centers along the Blue Ridge Parkway. [..] The prospect of dirtier restrooms, sporadic grass mowing and litter pickup, and a shortage of rangers to answer questions and patrol has set off a furious campaign by a coalition of park advocates, tourism officials and businesses from to Maine to Wyoming. Their plea: The reductions would not just set back conservation efforts but also undermine local economies around the parks that rely on tourism.

The Defense Department will notify Congress as early as Wednesday of plans to furlough almost 800,000 civilian employees starting in April if automatic budget cuts take effect, according to a defense official. [...] By law, however, DoD must give lawmakers 45 days notice of employee furloughs. If the spending cuts, formally known as sequestration, begin as scheduled March 1, the Pentagon will likely send most civilians home for one day per week for up to 22 weeks through the end of the fiscal year in September, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told a House committee last week. The furloughs would save DoD about $5 billion out of the $46 billion total it will have to cut under sequestration, Carter said. Military personnel would be exempt.

Jessica Wright, acting Defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness, said that while the impact of sequestration on “military personnel would be devastating, the impact on civilians is catastrophic.” [...] “The first-, second- and third-order effect will be felt in local commands and communities. It’s not a Beltway phenomenon,” she said, noting that 80 percent of defense civilian employees work outside the Washington area. The 20 percent decrease in pay would affect business and communities and confront “many families with tough decisions.”

The Army estimates automatic budget cuts scheduled to take effect March 1 will have a $15 billion economic impact and affect more than 300,000 jobs nationwide. Hardest hit states include Texas, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Among the least affected: Delaware, Wyoming, Montana and Rhode Island. [...] The cuts will affect every Army installation, according to the documents. States with large bases and military contractors are taking the biggest hits. Texas, for instance, would face a $2.4 billion economic loss from the Army’s budget cuts. Nearly 30,000 Army civilian employees will be furloughed if the cuts go into effect. They will lose $180 million in pay.

If across-the-board budget cuts take effect as scheduled next month, every FBI employee, including special agents, will be furloughed for almost three weeks by the end of September. Ditto for many law enforcement officers at the Department of Homeland Security, where layoffs are also a possibility. Furloughs for Agriculture Department food safety inspectors will mean temporary shutdowns of meat processing plants. At the Social Security Administration, more than 1,500 temporary workers and re-employed retirees will be shown the door.

Budget cuts could result in up to 20 percent pay cut for federal workers:

Agriculture: Plans to furlough about one-third of its workforce, which would lead to “a nationwide shutdown of meat and poultry plants during a furlough of inspection personnel.”

Commerce: “Up to 2,600 NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) employees would have to be furloughed, approximately 2,700 positions would not be filled, and the number of contractors would have to be reduced by about 1,400.” Census vacancies would remain vacant.

Justice: “The Department estimates that it would lose the equivalent of more than 1,000 federal agents . . . as well as 1,300 correctional officers.”

“These employees aren’t some fat cat bureaucrats in a plush Washington office. They are the firefighters who safeguard our bases, the health-care professionals who treat injured soldiers in military hospitals, the mechanics who repair our tanks and planes, the logistics personnel who ensure supplies make it to our troops, the acquisition experts who prevent big defense contractors from ripping off taxpayers. Congress [needs] to find a solution to this manufactured crisis that does not punish our hard-working federal employees, cripple our economic recovery or gut federal programs and services.” — J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees

In addition to all the lost hours that went towards serving the public in one way or another – you never miss it until it’s gone! — imagine the lost commerce locally and regionally because of lost income. Civilian employees with the DoD (among others) stand to lose 8 hours in pay per week through September — that works out to a 20% pay cut. Could you afford that? Not to mention the lost incomes of all the people who will be sent home permanently or who could have been employed and who won’t be now.

All this manufactured crisis and upheaval because Republicans won’t agree to close some tax loopholes for the wealthiest to balance massive spending cuts (in a fragile economy!) with new revenue. In addition to March 1, we also have March 27 to look forward to. That’s when the government’s continuing resolution (funding to run the government) expires and when Republicans will undoubtedly threaten another government shutdown when they’re asked to ‘compromise.’

Let’s not forget two important things: right now the economy is improving and the deficit is shrinking.  And maybe that’s why Republicans are so unhappy. As former GOP Virginia governor Jim Gilmore said recently: “They think spending is the most important thing. It’s not.”

(Graphics above via the NYTimes)

Another day, another GOP bill aimed at punishing feds and protecting the wealthy

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The GOP must see the federal workforce as an easy punching bag that they can use and punish as their base demands:

Over the objections of the White House and unions, the House plans to vote Thursday afternoon on a bill to deny federal employees a 0.5 percent pay raise scheduled to take effect in April. [...]

Federal employee salaries were not increased in 2011 or 2012, and the freeze was extended another three months by the temporary funding bill that will expire March 27. Under a presidential order, the 0.5 percent increase—which the Obama administration had originally proposed to become effective last month—will be paid effective April 7, according to the Office of Personnel Management…

“The President’s announcement, which will cost taxpayers more than $10 billion over ten years, comes at a time when automatic spending cuts are scheduled to go into effect on March 1, 2013,” says a summary of the bill by the House Republican Conference.

But HERE’S the INTERESTING part:

In moving the bill to the House floor, the Rules Committee rejected an amendment proposed by Democrats to replace the planned sequestration with a package of cuts in agriculture direct payments and oil company subsidies and increased taxes on those making more than $1 million a year.

Also defeated was a proposal to extend the salary freeze only for members of Congress…

Take away corporate welfare, oil subsidies, and $77,000 deductions on dancing horses? That’s outlandish! Everyone suffers for the good of the wealthiest: that’s simply the Republican way.

See also: H.R. 273—To eliminate the 2013 statutory pay adjustment for Federal employees.

How will the Republican Party punish the federal workforce today?

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The GOP doesn’t see federal workers as people – they’re pawns in a political game that’s played with two sets of rules, depending on the president’s political party.

Since President Obama took office, what’s one of the GOP’s favorite fallbacks to obstruct economic recovery while sticking it to the group they hate the most? Target federal workers! This week they want to cut the federal workforce (again):

Republican lawmakers in both chambers on Wednesday proposed reducing the federal workforce through attrition to avoid sequestration this year. The 2013 Down Payment to Protect National Security Act would cut the entire government workforce by 10 percent through attrition at an estimated savings of $85 billion over the next decade. It would replace the sequester for one year: The government will need to trim $85 billion in Defense and non-defense spending in fiscal 2013 if sequestration takes effect on March 1. The bill would allow federal agencies to hire one person for every three employees who retire or leave their job.

As Greg Sargent said, “That would do wonders for the recovery.” If the Republican Party didn’t have federal employees to kick around, they’d have no “ideas” or new bills ever. As Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va says,

“…government employees should not be asked to sacrifice more in the name of deficit reduction. Since 2011, federal employees have sacrificed $103 billion in the name of deficit reduction, more than $50,000 per employee,” Moran said, referring to the extended federal pay freeze and other measures. “It is time for Congress to find a comprehensive deficit plan that asks others to pay their fair share.”

Essentially, the GOP wants to reduce the workforce so we can all spare the wealthy and corporations from losing their very profitable tax loopholes and deductions? They want to reduce the federal workforce so more of their buddies, the private contractors, can be hired to do the work at much higher prices to the taxpayer? Sounds like the same song and dance we’ve been getting from the Republican Party for decades: take from the working and middle class to further enrich their benefactors.

Of course, it’s a much different story when a Republican is in the White House.  In June of 2012, Think Progress reported: “Public sector employment is now down 608,000 workers since January 2009, a 2.7 percent decline. At the same point in President Bush’s term, public sector employment was up 3.7 percent. If, over the past 40 months, public sector employment had grown at the same pace as it did in President Bush’s first term, there would be 1.4 million additional people at work right now. That’d be enough to bring the unemployment rate down by nearly a full percentage point.” See graph below:

Ultimately, Republicans would like to see us all working 16-hour shifts in corporate-sponsored mancamps (CorpCamps), living in CorpDorms, getting paid with vouchers which would be good for things like CorpFood or CorpMed. But asking the CEOs of obscenely profitable corporations to pay a living wage to their workers, or wanting a tax system that doesn’t reward wealth and punish everyone else? That’s socialism.

The good news: each corporate mancamp will sponsor its own Thunderdome. 

image: disassociatedramblings

Related: 

Attention federal workers: the Republican Party STILL hates you

The GOP has been successful at cutting deficits to obstruct economic recovery

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Brian Beutler says the GOP’s obsession with the deficit has HURT the economy: 

Here’s the buried lede from the Congressional Budget Office, which on Tuesday released its Budget and Economic Outlook for the coming decade: D.C.’s deficit obsession has been quite effective at cutting deficits at the expense of the still-struggling economy.

“[E]conomic activity will expand slowly this year, with real GDP growing by just 1.4 percent,” according to CBO’s projections. “That slow growth reflects a combination of ongoing improvement in underlying economic factors and fiscal tightening that has already begun or is scheduled to occur-including the expiration of a 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax, an increase in tax rates on income above certain thresholds, and scheduled automatic reductions in federal spending. That subdued economic growth will limit businesses’ need to hire additional workers, thereby causing the unemployment rate to stay near 8 percent this year, CBO projects.”

In other words, intentional efforts to reduce annual deficits and stabilize the debt are working. But if you retrain your gaze from the government’s balance sheet to the real economy, you’ll see the impact of that austerity is fewer people working and slower growth. According to CBO, the recovery won’t really pick up steam until next year, and the economy won’t have recovered until the end of 2017, when it will reach its output potential, and unemployment will fall to 5.5 percent.

CBO notes that the U.S. hasn’t experienced six consecutive years with unemployment exceeding 7.5 percent in over 70 years.

If you cut spending, you slow economic growth. It’s a pretty simple cause and effect. And it’s very important for the Republican Party to try and slow economic growth when a Democrat is in the Oval Office.

Greg Sargent piles on: 

President Obama continues to demand a mix of spending cuts and new revenues via the closing of loopholes, and yesterday he called on Congress to agree on a short term package of cuts and tax reforms to temporarily delay the sequester cuts, since they could cripple the recovery. GOP leaders shot this down, because they continue to refuse to countenance any new revenues. As John Boehner put it today: “The American people believe that the tax question has been settled.”

Meanwhile, other Republicans are taking other steps to avoid agreeing to new revenues. Republicans on the Senate and House Armed Services Committee will unveil a plan today to avert the sequester for one year by paying for it with … a 10 percent across the board reduction in the federal workforce. (That would do wonders for the recovery.)

So, here’s a chart, created by House progressives, that perfectly captures just how absurd it is that Republicans insist only on spending cuts to replace the sequester, while refusing to entertain a penny in new revenues from the rich. It shows what happened during the last two Congressional rounds of deficit reduction:

absurditycropped

The first circle represents the more than $1.5 trillion in spending cuts Dems agreed to, in exchange for zero in new revenues, as part of the debt ceiling deal of 2011. The second circle portrays the state of play after Republicans agreed to some $700 billion in new revenues as part of the recent fiscal cliff deal. As you can see, the ledger is still tilted lopsidedly in favor of Republicans: Some 70 percent of the deficit reduction we’ve seen thus far came in the form of spending cuts Republicans want, while only 30 percent came in the form of the new revenues Democrats want.

Here’s what this means: Even if the parties reach a deal in the third round of deficit reduction to avert the sequester with something approaching an equivalent sum of spending cuts and new revenues, the overall deficit reduction balance would still be heavily lopsided towards Republicans. Yet they continue to insist on resolving round three only through cuts, anyway.

As Steve Benen notes, we know this sequester would do severe damage to the economy, because the Congressional Budget Office has told us so, and because the recent economic contraction also confirmed this.

 

Related:

The GOP doesn’t really care about saving money: average defense contractor pay vs. fed pay

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Following the last post on the sequester and comparisons between average salaries of federal workers and defense contractor executives ($45,000 to $760,000), in case you didn’t already know: Republicans are not interested in balancing the budget or saving money. That’s not the business they’re in, no matter how much Fox airtime they expend towards that particular party propaganda. Their business is to take revenue from programs and services that benefit the average American and divert it to corporations — and that’s especially true for the military-industrial complex.

Remember when Mitt Romney made the ridiculous claim that federal workers make more than he does? Take a gander at how much his campaign raked in from three defense contractors (see larger table below):

NORTHRUP GRUMMOND LOCKHEED MARTIN GENERAL DYNAMICS TOTAL
Romney, Mitt (R ) $111,014 $165,244 $86,829 $363,087
Obama, Barack (D) $108,756 $126,932 $41,457 $277,145

And, yeah, the President received contributions from them too. You know what the difference is? Obama hasn’t ever claimed federal workers are overpaid or make more than he does. He wanted to give feds a measly 0.5% salary increase this year, and the GOP rebelled.

By the way, a 0.5% increase on an average annual salary of $45,000 would be a massive $225.00 a year. Who was against that? In January, Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) introduced a bill to block the planned raise in 2013 of 0.5% for federal workers, which was co-sponsored by 28 Republicans, including Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). The Washington Post reported that Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) “quick scheduling of the bill for a vote demonstrates the priority House GOP members give to holding down federal pay.” Ever notice Republicans never suggest reducing the pay of defense contractors?

The DeSantis Bill currently has 35 co-sponsors and is being held in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Let’s look at how much the bill’s author (and the 10 fastest co-sponsors) received from three of the largest defense contractors:

Ranked by who co-sponsored the quickest 2012 CAMPAIGN DONATIONS FROM:
Cosponsors: H.R.273 [113th] NORTHROP GRUMMAN LOCKHEED MARTIN GENERAL DYNAMICS TOTAL
Issa, Darrell E. [R-CA-49]* $5,000 $10,000 $15,000
Farenthold, Blake [R-TX-27]* $1,000 $2,000 $3,000
Mica, John L. [R-FL-7]* $18,250 $10,000 $7,000 $35,250
Duncan, John J., Jr. [R-TN-2]* $1,000 $4,000 $5,000
Jordan, Jim [R-OH-4]* $1,000 $2,000 $10,000 $13,000
Collins, Doug [R-GA-9]* $1,000 $1,000
Meadows, Mark [R-NC-11]* $0
Yoho, Ted S. [R-FL-3]* $0
Massie, Thomas [R-KY-4]* $0
Hudson, Richard [R-NC-8]* $2,000 $2,000

And, for good measure:

Cantor, Eric [R-VA] $20,000 $10,000 $10,000 $40,000

And don’t you even worry about Meadows, Yoho, and Massie — they’re brand new and were elected by the tea crowd. They’re still working on their bona fides for future contributions from the big boys. Farenhold and Collins, on the other hand, will simply take even one to three pieces of silver from whomever they can get it.

Defense contractors, unlike federal employees, aren’t that worried about the sequester

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The Washington Post reports that defense contractors aren’t very concerned about sequestration:

“In call after call with investors, officials at some of the area’s largest contracting firms refused to guess how much it would cost them if Congress allows the “sequester” to kick in on March 1. Even as their lobbyists keep warning how much the cuts would hurt the industry, the executives are projecting confidence that the sequester will not happen. Northrop Grumman chief executive Wes Bush said Wednesday that his company’s outlook for the year projects “the sequestration is not triggered” and that Congress barely touches federal contract spending levels for 2013. General Dynamics …too, assumes no sequestration. Their confidence defies the emerging consensus on Capitol Hill that Congress will not find an agreement in time to cancel or delay the cuts… If the sequester cuts take effect in full, economists estimate they will destroy about 1 million jobs nationwide, including hundreds of thousands in the Washington area. The executives do not appear to believe that will come to pass. It may be because Congress keeps averting fiscal crises at the very last minute, and because the Obama administration asked contractors last year not to issue layoff notices in preparation for cuts that were originally scheduled to begin this month. It may also be because contracting firms appear confident in their ability to lobby for sequester relief.”

Meanwhile, federal labor unions are asking Congress (*cough* Republicans *cough*) to quit playing favorites with their defense contractor buddies if they really want to balance the budget:

“The NTEU has called on Congress to focus its attention on contractors for cost savings. During the last session of Congress, the union lobbied for a stalled measure that would limit reimbursements for contractor executive pay. Gilman said the legislation could save the government up to $50 billion over 10 years. “Some folks are just adamant that their number one goal is to prevent these guys that are making $45,000 a year from getting a half-percent raise as opposed to limiting folks that are being reimbursed $760,000 a year,” Gilman said. “We can’t get some of the people who are screaming loudest about cutting the budget to look at the total dollars as opposed to just looking at the federal workforce.””

$45,000 to $760,000 is quite a discrepancy between the average federal salary and the average pay for a defense contractor executive. The Bush Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over now, right? Why is the war machine not winding down?

The enormous salaries paid by the taxpayer to defense contractor executives are just another form of corporate welfare. How is this not “big government?” It’s ridiculous that federal workers could be doing the same work for less money, but the conservative talking point is that by the government hiring contractors at enormous wages we’re “drowning government in a bathtub.” Bullshit. Defense contractors are banking massive amounts of tax payer money and WE’RE the ones who are drowning.

Attention federal workers: the Republican Party STILL hates you

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Washington Post: The House will consider legislation next week that would extend the freeze on basic federal pay rates through the end of 2013, according to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). The bill, introduced by Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and cosponsored by 28 Republicans, would block a planned raise of 0.5 percent that is scheduled to take effect after a temporary spending measure expires in March. Republicans have introduced similar legislation previously, but Cantor’s quick scheduling of the bill for a vote demonstrates the priority House GOP members give to holding down federal pay.

Joe Davidson: Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, called his action “a continuation of the anti-federal-worker line of attack that became an all-too-familiar staple of the 112th Congress, particularly in the House. More than two dozen bills were introduced during that two-year period aimed at federal pay, benefits and rights.” [...]  “The hardworking men and women who make up the federal workforce have made a substantial sacrifice over the past two years to help bring down the deficit,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). “Efforts by House Republicans to constantly use federal employees as a piggy bank — especially when the vast majority of their caucus refuses to ask millionaires to contribute more to reducing our deficit — are unconscionable. We cannot keep asking them to contribute more than their fair share as we work to put our fiscal house in order.”

GovExec: “This bill is nothing more than another direct attack on hardworking public servants,” said NARFE President Joseph A. Beaudoin, in a Jan. 18 letter to representatives. “Instead of pushing political messaging bills, Congress should focus on the real issues lawmakers need to address in the next two months, including sequestration, the debt limit and the expiring continuing resolution.” Beaudoin criticized some members’ reliance on a 2012 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which concluded that federal workers on average earn more than their private-sector counterparts. The study controlled for various factors, including occupation, education and work experience; despite its overall conclusion, CBO did find that most highly educated feds earn less than their private-sector counterparts. “But even if you assume that federal employees are overpaid on average — an incorrect assumption — it does not follow that all federal employees are overpaid,” Beaudoin wrote. “[...] Both Beaudoin and Kelley said government workers have already contributed $103 billion to deficit reduction over the next decade as a result of the pay freeze and the smaller pay increase for 2013 that President Obama wants for employees. Based on the Employment Cost Index, federal pay scales should have increased by 1.7 percent in January. Beaudoin also cited feds’ contribution of $15 billion from the 2.3 percent increase in retirement contributions that new hires must pay. “Enough is enough,” Beaudoin said. “It is time Congress found other ways to reduce the deficit then to continually take from those who dedicate their lives to public service.”

Federal workers earn too much? False.

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The Republican Tea Party, led by Romney-Ryan, won’t be happy until most of the American workforce, those who sign the back of a paycheck, are all earning Walmart wages — public or private:

“White-collar federal employees are underpaid on average by about 35 percent compared with the private sector, a widening of the “pay gap,” which stood at about 26 percent last year, an advisory group said Friday.

The Federal Salary Council based that number on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that by law are supposed to be used in setting annual General Schedule pay raises.

Federal workers have had their pay frozen for two years. In August, President Obama announced plans to extend the freeze until April. He has proposed a modest 0.5 percent increase afterward.

Members of the council, composed of union leaders and outside pay experts, attributed the wider gap to the freeze and to changes in the methods that BLS uses in its pay comparisons.”

— Pay gap widens for federal workers, panel says

Just remember all you conservative base voting rubes who plan to cast your ballot for Romney: you’re next.

Flashback: Romney in Nov/2011, when he suggested that federal employees make more money than him (the quarter-billionaire):

“We have to cut back on the scale of the federal government. And for me that will start by reducing federal employees by 10 percent. You do that through attrition. And then something else that is just as important, and that’s to make sure the people who work for government don’t get better pay and better benefits than people that work in the private sector. The tax payers shouldn’t have to have money taken out of their pay checks to pay people in government who are our servants who are making a lot more money than we are.”

Less federal employees, lower wages for the federal workforce = austerity cuts for the general public. Less programs and services for the people of America with lower hiring standards for those programs and services that survive.

Postal Workers begin four-day hunger strike, say Congress is killing the postal service

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“Not the Internet, not the recession, not private competition, Congress is killing the postal service,” Community and Postal Workers United wrote in a statement, NPR reports.

Federal Eye reports: ”But the biggest target is Congress, which has not passed legislation to reform the cash-strapped agency. The Senate approved a bill in April that would rebalance postal finances by giving billions of dollars to offer buyouts and early retirement incentives to employees. Several bills are pending in the House.”

Romney economics: fire people for the simple crime of working in government

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NOTE TO ALL GOVERNMENT WORKERS: Mitt Romney hates you.

Jed Lewison points out the alarmingly stupid lie that Mitt Romney told his audience in Craig, Colorado last week:

That stimulus he put in place, it didn’t help private sector jobs, it helped preserve government jobs, and the one place we should have cut back was on government jobs. We have a 145,000 more government workers under this president. Let’s send them home and put you back to work!

Mitt Romney’s 145,000 claim isn’t accurate, but even if it were, it’s amazing that Romney believes firing tens of thousands of Americans would be good for the economy. The way Romney puts it, firing public sector workers would create jobs in the private sector, but that’s nonsense. The economy isn’t zero-sum game: You don’t need to fire someone to create a job. In fact, every time someone loses their job, no matter whether they are in the private or public sector, the economy as a whole takes a hit.

But Romney’s crazy economic theory is not even grounded in reality—under Obama, public sector employment has dropped, while private sector employment has grown. Obama signed the stimulus in February of 2009. Since then, public sector employment has dropped by 608,000.Private sector employment, meanwhile, has increased by 760,000. Even if you just look at federal employment (which is but a small fraction of the overall public sector workforce), only 26,000 jobs have been added, a slower pace of growth than in the private sector.

Just as Paul Krugman recently said, Obama’s actually “been the one who’s been doing what Republicans say is the right answer:”

Just over three years into Reagan’s first term, government jobs grew by 3.1 percent; at the same time during Obama’s tenure, they’ve been cut by 2.7 percent. Hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs have been shed in recent years. Government jobs also grew under President George W. Bush, which helped keep unemployment down during most of his two terms. “After there was a recession under Ronald Reagan, government employment went way up. It went up after the recessions under the first George Bush and the second George Bush.”

FACT: The only time government employment has gone DOWN during a recession has been under Obama.

Romney is using the old “Republican Strategy” on the GOP’s working class, trailer park dwelling base voters — all of whom have been conditioned to believe that if others have something they don’t (like a job with a living wage), it’s because those ‘others’ have taken something away from them personally. How else are you going to justify to people who will never be rich, who are living paycheck to paycheck, that the wealthiest need more money and they will need to get by on less?

It would seem Romney has some kind of personal vendetta for public sector workers. Mitt’s worth about $250 million and has said federal workers make more than him. Despite all of this, how many working and middle class conservatives will vote for him anyway? (ALL of them.)

Mitt Romney coddles government parasites: the uncomfortable glitch in Republican ideology

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Jonathan Chait makes a great point about the uncomfortable glitch in Republican ideology, which has been enthusiastically embraced by Mitt Romney, regarding ‘certain’ government workers:

Police officers and firefighters are a tricky occupational category for Republicans. Culturally, they are allies — working class, mostly male, and beloved symbols of American values. Economically, though, they are government workers, which has always put their interests in tension with those of the GOP, and especially so in recent years, as Republicans have increasingly held up government workers as a kind of parasitic class.

Last night Mitt Romney was strolling across one side of this tricky line and slipped to the other. Appearing at a fund-raiser, he recounted his trip the day before to a Manhattan fire station. 

[...] ROMNEY:  ”I spoke with a fireman yesterday, and he has a one-bedroom apartment, and his wife is pregnant, and he can’t afford a second bedroom,” he said, referring to a visit to New York City. “I asked the firefighters I was meeting with, about 15 or them, how many had had to take another job to make ends meet, and almost every one of them had.”

Well, maybe we should pay them more! Oh, wait — Romney’s position is that these fine public servants are luxuriating in excessive pay, a fact that, unlike swelling income inequality, constitutes a major source of unfairness in American life. (“We will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the taxpayers they serve,” he said last week.) Obama’s position is that the federal government ought to provide aid to state governments to rehire some of the laid-off teachers, cops, and firefighters. Republicans oppose this. Continue reading…

Also noteworthy, many police and firefighters belong to unions, which are One of the Greatest Evils of This World according to proper conservative thought. How on earth could Fortune 500 CEOs earn 380 times more than the average worker with strong labor unions?

What I find fascinating is how there could be any government workers, at any level of government, in any job category, who would consider — even for a moment — today’s GOP as their ally on any subject that could personally affect them or their livelihoods.

At this point, it should be a no-brainer which political party is actually fighting for government workers and which party just likes to pretend they’re really, really macho with public demonstrations of homage to the manliest men of civil service, while plotting to defund their ranks (or their pay and benefits) behind closed doors.

Photos below: (pic 1) Giuliani and Romney carry pizza two feet to NY firefighters on May 1 for photo-op. (pic 2) Pizza boxes dumped on aide after photo-op.

Race to the bottom with Romney!

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The politics of resentment (or how to gin up the rubes):

ROMNEY THINKS federal workers’ pay and benefits are ‘unfair’ — “We will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the taxpayers they serve,” Romney said. Among the other items Romney listed as unfair: “urban children being denied access to the good schools of their choice,” “politicians giving taxpayer money to their friends’ businesses,” and “requiring union workers to contribute to politicians not of their choosing.” – GovExec

Of course, if regular people think it’s ‘unfair’ that Fortune 500 CEOs make 380 times what average workers make or that multi-millionaires, like Romney, pay less federal tax on their incomes than we do, Romney considers that class warfare. Mitt and the Republican Party need the working and middle class to resent each other and not think too much about him and his wealthy friends and how the Bush tax cuts increase income inequality in our country.

Here’s an idea: what if the private sector was expected to offer a living wage and benefits too? Or even create some jobs with all the money they’ve been hoarding? For the GOP, it really is a race to the bottom: how many Americans can they get to work for minimum wage and no benefits? And how easily can they get their conservative base to agree that people with good wages and benefits are their enemy? (Very easily, unfortunately.)

Those corporate CEOs are only making 380 times more than average workers — shouldn’t we all suck it up and take even less money so that CEOs can earn 400 or even 500 times more? Republicans have so brainwashed their base that the rubes would actually be okay with that idea — as long as a Republican, any Republican, was in the White House.

Related:

LAST DAY to submit comments on USDA’s proposed rule: allow chicken slaughterhouses to self-inspect

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CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT COMMENTS ON THIS PROPOSED RULE

More austerity / deregulation for the American people, endangering our food supply, health, the factory workers, the humane treatment of the animals, and federal jobs — all to allow the industry to maximize profits:

USDA to Let Industry Self-Inspect Chicken

The USDA hopes to save $85 million over three years by laying off 1,000 government inspectors and turning over their duties to company monitors who will staff the poultry processing lines in plants across the country.

The poultry companies expect to save more than $250 million a year because they, in turn will  be allowed to speed up the processing lines to a dizzying 175 birds per minute with one USDA inspector at the end of the line.  Currently, traditional poultry lines move at a maximum of 90 birds per minute, with up to three USDA inspectors on line.

Whistleblower inspectors opposed to the new USDA rule say the companies cannot be trusted to watch over themselves.  They contend that companies routinely pressure their employees not to stop the line or slow it down, making thorough inspection for contaminants, tumors and evidence of disease nearly impossible.  “At that speed, it’s all a blur,” one current inspector tells ABC News.

CLICK HERE TO READ PROPOSED RULE / SUBMIT COMMENTS

The problem for workers, advocates say, is that the presence of human inspectors serves as the primary governor of line speed in plants. With USDA inspectors out of the picture, the proposed rule would allow some plants to move from a maximum of 70 to 140 birds per minute to a maximum of 175, a potential boon to the efficiency-minded poultry industry. – USDA Poultry Plant Proposal Could Allow Plants To Speed Up Processing Lines, Stirring Concern For Workers

If you plan to continue eating chicken that’s inspected by the corporation turning a profit on how many carcasses it can push out the door in an hour, you might find this information from FSIS useful…

According to OMB Watch, a government accountability newsletter, cutbacks at the USDA have coincided with a significant rise in salmonella outbreaks. The group says 2010 was a record year for salmonella infection and 2011 saw 103 poultry, egg and meat recalls because of disease-causing bacteria, the most in nearly 10 years. – Yahoo! News

In the period from March to August 2011, 90 percent of the defects found by the USDA inspectors involved “visible fecal contamination that was missed by company employees.” – Mother Jones

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTS