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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (79962)	5/26/2010 7:07:59 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 90947

House Republicans propose federal pay freeze By: Mark Hemingway Commentary Staff Writer 05/25/10 11:34 AM EDT The Washington Post: <<< Would freezing federal worker salaries help cut government costs? House Republicans think so, and are floating the idea as one of several potential government spending cuts. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) recently launched YouCut, an online contest designed to highlight government projects his colleagues consider wasteful. Participants are asked to vote each week on five proposed cuts and the most popular is then introduced by Republicans to the full House for an up or down vote. This week’s choices include cutting President Obama’s proposed 1.4 percent pay raise for civilian federal workers from next year’s budget. Republicans estimate the raises would cost taxpayers approximately $2 billion in fiscal 2011 and about $30 billion over the next decade. >>> Of course, this isn’t just a good idea to save money. But it would also be a step toward restoring some balance and fairness between federal and private pay. From an Examiner editorial last month: <<< Data compiled by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reveals the extent of the pay gap between federal and private workers. As of 2008, the average federal salary was $119,982, compared with $59,909 for the average private sector employee. In other words, the average federal bureaucrat makes twice as much as the average working taxpayer. Add the value of benefits like health care and pensions, and the gap grows even bigger. The average federal employee’s benefits add $40,785 to his annual total compensation, whereas the average working taxpayer’s benefits increase his total compensation by only $9,881. In other words, federal workers are paid on average salaries that are twice as generous as those in the private sector, and they receive benefits that are four times greater. >>> Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (79962)	5/26/2010 7:11:07 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 90947

Farm subsidies paid to congressmen; Is that why Congress shut down the database? By: Mark Tapscott Editorial Page Editor 05/25/10 12:13 PM EDT It was noted in this space yesterday that in 2008 Congress included an obscure amendment in an agriculture bill that changed one word in the law requiring the Department of Agriculture to maintain a publicly available database of who receives federal farm subsidies. That one word was "shall." It was changed to "may." The bureaucrats at the Ag Department promptly opted to stop maintaining the database that had been the source of years of embarrassing media coverage about subsidy checks going to such overalled farmers as ABC News reporter Sam Donaldson, NBA pro basketball star Scott Pippen, and mega-millionaire David Rockefeller. Turns out the reason Congress did that might well have had something to do with the fact that multiple members of the Senate and House are on the receiving end of those ag subsidy checks. Ron Utt of the Heritage Foundation detailed the way such subsidies ended up going to members of Congress in a 2007 study that named names. Among those Utt named were these: * Sen. Max Baucus, D-MT, and five other members of his family own a large Montana ranch that had received more than $230,000 in subsidy checks over a five-year period. It was unclear at the time exactly what was the nature of the senator's ownership interest and his spokesman declined to discuss it with Utt. * Sen. Gordon Smith, R-OR, and his wife owned a frozen food company back home that had received $45,500 in federal ag subsidies. * Sen. Ken Salazar, D-CO, and his brother, Rep. John Salazar, D-CO, had between them received more than $162,000 in Ag subsidies. * Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA, received more than $225,000, while other members of his family received more than $654,000. * Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-SD, was a member of the House Agriculture Committee but did not receive subsidy checks. However, her father, a former South Dakota governor, had received more than three-quarters of a million dollars from the Ag Department program. Heritage was far from alone in exposing such problems with the federal agriculture subsidies. The major impetus for the coverage was frequently work done by the Environmental Working Group, which regularly posted the data from the subsidy database. Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com