In this space on Dec. 14, I informed readers that lawmakers were set to receive raises Jan. 1, even as hundreds of thousands of their constituents were losing jobs and prospects of finding new jobs.
I told readers that on Pearl Harbor Day the Senate quietly used a 65-to-33 procedural vote to beat back an effort to halt an automatic congressional pay raise of 3.4 percent, or $4,900.
Under a 1989 law, I said, legislators get a “cost-of-living” increase unless House and Senate members specifically vote to block it, “a mechanism that often lets the increases take effect with little notice …”
The law obviously applies, I concluded, regardless of war, famine, a poor economy or bad judgment.
The White House was complicit in this theft of taxpayer money because the president signed the legislation making it law, instead of threatening to veto it if it contained raises the government cannot afford to pay this deficit year.
Then something else happened that explained why President Bush did not threaten to veto congressional pay raises. Following Congress’ lead, Bush gave federal workers a raise of between 4.5 to 5.4 percent last week.
He gave 3.6 percent across-the-board raises, plus increases that vary by regional cost of living, The Associated Press reported, noting that the president “signed legislation last month authorizing raises for 1.2 million white-collar workers.”
Isn’t that just peachy? While an equal number of Americans lost their jobs this year because lawmakers were absent without leave while Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s poor decisions tanked the economy, they then give themselves raises and, to throw a little more salt on this open wound, let President Bush spend millions more tax dollars buying the loyalty of federal underlings.
Only in America, as they say. Only in America.
Now look, I don’t begrudge raises. I believe anytime working people get raises, it helps them, their families and the economy. But when we’re talking raises that go to federal employees or federal elected officials, then we’re talking about raises that are financed by the public sector. We’re talking about paying for raises out of a budget that cannot afford them (the government returns to deficit spending next year, when all these raises take effect).
Yeah, OK, lawmakers and federal employees also pay taxes. But the federal government is not a private industry or corporation, and therefore is obviously not subject to the same budgetary constraints. Furthermore, these people will never pay an amount of taxes equal to the cost of their raises.
In the private sector, if a company cannot afford to raise the pay of its workers and executives, then guess what? They don’t get raises.
Meantime, corporations are banned from forcefully taking the amount of money needed to pay for raises from another corporation, yet the federal government has done this for years.
President Bush was supposed to be the antithesis of Clinton-Gore, yet his government-expanding ways continue to remind me daily that political animals of both major parties come from the same big-government den.
OK, so it’s just a raise, right? What’s another $40 million of tax money in a $2 trillion budget? Fine. But then ask yourself how the budget got to be $2 trillion in the first place. That’s easy: Congress and presidents have 40-million-dollared us to death for decades.
After years of this kind of abuse, isn’t it about time to say, “Enough is enough?” I can think of two trillion reasons why we should.
