“We have to make tough choices,” said Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “But let’s remember these are civil servants who are paid pretty darn well.”A Miami Herald AP article cites freeze supporters as claiming the average federal worker's wage plus benefits amounts to "nearly double the median US household income." Note the use of the same old ploy, comparing "average" to "median": a few exceptionally well-paid federal employees can tweak the average pay quite high. Comparing median income to median income would be honest, but this is Darrell Issa and company we're talking about here...
The Businessweek article offers this:
Republican Frank Wolf, whose northern Virginia district includes the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, yelled on the House floor that the bill would target agents who tracked Osama bin Laden, astronauts, border patrol agents, cancer researchers and Veterans Affairs hospital nurses treating wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan.In other words, federal employees are not limited to the overstuffed payrolls of members of Congress. Many of them do things most Americans would agree need to be done, even if they are not employed by the military (the troops are explicitly excluded from the House's federal freeze). But even the worthiest are frozen along with the rest.
In my career, I worked for the state government for about a decade and the private sector for a few decades, concluding with a 20-year period of self-employment, so I've seen the lot. And I can tell you what happens to the most capable of government employees: they jump to the private sector when they have the opportunity. Opportunities may be scarce now, but sooner or later, if Issa and company kick them in the teeth often enough, good federal employees (state employees, too) will leave. Then GOPers can complain about bad government, neglecting to mention that they made it bad...
Darrel Issa is a demon spawn hatchling from California. He's like the older brother grabbing the younger sibling's arms and making him jab himself in his face, yelling,"Why are you hitting yourself?"
ReplyDeleteHe helped remove our Governor Gray from office and then (as rumor has it) wept when he found out he wouldn't get the office but Schwarzenegger would. He also has some shady shit in his past that has been covered up.... Lovely man all around.
ellroon, Issa reminds me somewhat of Dan Burton, back in the day. Burton called literally a couple hundred witnesses in an attempt to clobber Bill Clinton, but Clinton was vastly smarter, and Burton never really succeeded. Issa is a similar a'hole. I know he will always be re-elected if he runs, but maybe someone will catch him in bed with a page (maybe even a male page) and his career will end. Or maybe I'm wishing too hard...
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