The Republican Attack on Federal Workers

By DAVID FIRESTONE
NYT

Congressional Republicans said yesterday they would support an extension of the payroll tax cut, but refused President Obama’s proposal to make millionaires pay for it with a small surcharge on their earnings. Instead, they want middle-class federal workers to offset the cost.

The Republican plan would extend the two-year pay freeze on federal workers for another three years, and would reduce the size of the federal workforce through attrition by 10 percent, or 200,000 jobs. In other words, they would make working for the government increasingly painful, and when employees quit in frustration or retire, only one out of three positions would be filled.

So a payroll tax cut designed to stimulate employment would actually lower federal employment by 200,000, all to protect the income of millionaires. But that’s fine with Republicans, who have long believed that government jobs aren’t really jobs. They’re parasites, sucking the nation’s economic resources from the much more important private sector.

(More here.)