Free Republic

More than 77,000 federal government employees throughout the country — including computer operators, more than 5,000 air traffic controllers, 22 librarians and one interior designer — earned more than the governors of the states in which they work. The findings, from a Congressional Research Service report requested by Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, were released at a time when public workers’ salaries and benefits are under scrutiny across the country as governments try to streamline. CRS reviewed 2009 salary figures, the most recent available, and found 77,057 employees who earned more in annual pay than their respective governors. Of those...

Republican leaders in Congress think so, and they are calling for an overhaul of the entire federal pay system to help slash government spending. Democrats and other defenders of the government work force say federal workers are actually underpaid compared with their private counterparts. A closer look at the data shows that both sides have a point but that supporters of federal workers are a bit closer to reality.... That argument is backed up by a 2002 study of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It found that federal salaries for most professional and administrative jobs lagged well behind compensation offered...

If you’re collecting a federal paycheck, you should pay federal taxes. That’s the premise of a bill I introduced last week to require federal employees to pay their taxes or be fired. The IRS reports that 100,000 federal civilian employees are seriously delinquent on their federal taxes. These aren’t just people who fell behind. These are people who have actively defied IRS letters and phone calls seeking payment. In 2009, the US government failed to collect $1 billion a year from federal employees alone. While the number of delinquent federal employees has remained fairly constant since 2004, the amount owed...

How many Americans work in government? That’s a difficult question to answer. Officially, as of 2009, the federal government employed 2.8 million individuals out of a total U.S. workforce of 236 million — just over 1 percent of the workforce. But it’s not quite as simple as that. Add in uniformed military personnel, and the figure goes up to just under 4.4 million. There are also 66,000 people who work in the legislative branch and for federal courts. That makes the figure around 2 percent of the workforce. Yet even that doesn’t tell the full story. A lot of government...

“Recognizing the needs are greater than ever, OPM granted the Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area . . . an extension of the campaign solicitation period to January 17, 2011. Federal employees can pledge funds to . . . [m]ore than 4,000 local, national and international charities.” What is the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC)? It’s the federal government’s massive annual effort to encourage federal employees and military members to make payroll deductions to certain charitable organizations. “As always, CFC donations are tax deductible.” . . .

The federal agency with the largest back-tax bill? The US Postal Service, where hundreds of thousands of employees owed a total of more than $283 million, said the report. Also high on the list is the Department of Veterans Affairs, where employees had more than $156 million in back taxes. The biggest group, though, is retired military personnel. That group owed more than $1.5 billion dollars. And even the White House folks are behind in their taxes. Employees in the executive office of the president, which includes nearly 2,000 employees, owed more than $831,000 to Uncle Sam, the IRS found....

NOTE The following text is a quote: Acquisition Reform Plays Key Role in Pentagon’s Cost Savings By Lisa Daniel American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, July 15, 2010 – The Defense Department has the opportunity to save billions of taxpayer dollars through acquisitions reform, but only if it grows its workforce with the right federal workers in place to oversee contracts, a senior Pentagon official said today. “There is a significant opportunity to save billions of dollars, but only if we have a well-trained and sufficient workforce,” Shay Assad, the acting director of the department’s procurement and acquisition policy, said during...

The Obama Administration handed out more than $400 million in awards to federal employees last year, up by more than $80 million from the prior year, according to new government data. The biggest winners were air traffic controllers and top managers in Washington, a review of fiscal year 2009 salary reports from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management showed. OPM’s data, obtained by the Asbury Park Press through a freedom of information request, account for 1.3 million employees, or about 65 percent of the federal civilian work force.

...in a memorandum dated June 2, 2010, President Obama directed agencies to extend a host of benefits to their employees’ same-sex domestic partners as permitted by law. He also directed me to issue guidance to ensure consistent and appropriate implementation of his memorandum. This memorandum constitutes OPM’s guidance.I. DEFINITION OF “DOMESTIC PARTNER” For purposes of ensuring consistent implementation of the President’s memorandum, a “domestic partner” is a person in a domestic partnership with an employee or annuitant of the same sex.[1] The term “domestic partnership” is defined as a committed relationship between two adults, of the same sex, in which...

Does anyone know how many people actually work for the federal government?

If you work for Uncle Sam, but you don’t pay him after he pays you, look out for Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R- Utah). “Fire Federal Employees Who Are Not Paying Their Federal Income Taxes.” That’s the headline on a news release Chaffetz issued Wednesday, announcing legislation that would terminate federal workers who have a “seriously delinquent tax debt.” Currently, only IRS staffers can be dismissed if they don’t pay their taxes. “Federal employees have an obvious obligation to pay their federal income taxes,” said Chaffetz. “Because they draw their compensation from the American taxpayers, federal employees owe it to the...

WASHINGTON—(ENEWSPF)—February 24, 2010. Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., and Ranking Member Susan Collins, R-Me., Wednesday questioned the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security about the high ratio of contractors to civilian employees within the DHS workforce. According to DHS estimates, the first the Committee has received despite years of informal requests for these numbers, the Department has 188,000 civilian employees (not including uniformed members of the Coast Guard) and 200,000 contractors working for it – for a total workforce of almost 400,000. “To me, this is just a shocking and unacceptable number,” Lieberman said...

Some might say it’s a good thing, others might say the opposite, but there’s no denying that union membership is declining in the United States. Last year, 12.3 percent of wage and salary workers were union members, compared with 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year for which the federal government compiled comparable data. A greater share of public- than private-sector workers belong to unions. Last year local government workers — like teachers, police officers and firefighters — had the highest rate of public sector membership, at 43.3 percent. The figures show a gender differential. More men (13.3 percent) are...

Guess who is getting a pay raise? Who least deserves a pay raise? Obama is proposing that those who deserve it the least, federal employees should get a 1.4% pay increase while millions of Americans are out of work and struggling to pay taxes. Taxes that Obama is trying to increase. To further salt the wound for taxpayers, the Census Bureau reports that in 2009 Federal Employees earned on average 21% more than workers in the private sector, (ibid). The

Federal Government Operating Status in the Washington, DC, Area the following message applies only to Thursday, February 11, 2010 Notice: Due to very high volume traffic access to all other OPM.gov pages has been modified. Select the following link to proceed to opm.gov. Select the follwing link to access e-QIP at its temporary address. Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are CLOSED. This Means . . . Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are closed. Nonemergency employees (including employees on pre-approved leave) will be granted excused absence for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. This...

Federal Government Operating Status in the Washington, DC, Area the following message applies only to Wednesday, February 10, 2010 Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are CLOSED. This Means . . . Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are closed. Nonemergency employees (including employees on pre-approved leave) will be granted excused absence for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. This does not apply to employees on leave without pay, leave without pay for military duty, workers' compensation, suspension, or in another nonpay status. Telework employees may be expected to work from their telework sites, as...

A new report from the Bureaus of Labor Statistics that was released today, shows that almost 15 million Americans are currently out of work and unable to find jobs. Worse still, those with jobs have not seen their wages increase much in the last 10 years. However, government workers are enjoying a boom in hiring and generous salary increases thanks in large part to very cushy pensions and other benefits. The pay differential between public sector employees and the private sector shows a troubling trend. Government workers have benefited greatly, even during the severe recession, and their wages now outpace...

Federal Government Operating Status in the Washington, DC, Area the following message applies only to Tuesday, February 9, 2010 Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are CLOSED. This Means . . . Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are closed. Nonemergency employees (including employees on pre-approved leave) will be granted excused absence for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. This does not apply to employees on leave without pay, leave without pay for military duty, workers' compensation, suspension, or in another nonpay status. Telework employees may be expected to work from their telework sites, as...

Growing up in Michigan in the heyday of the United Auto Workers, I long assumed that labor unions were part of the natural order of things. That's no longer clear. Last month, the Labor Department reported that private-sector unions lost 834,000 members last year and now represent only 7.2 percent of private-sector employees. That's down from the all-time peak of 36 percent in 1953-54. But union membership is still growing in the public sector. Last year, 37.4 percent of public sector employees were union members. That percentage was down near zero in the 1950s. For the first time in history,...

January 20, 1981 Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies Subject: Hiring Freeze I am ordering today a strict freeze on the hiring of Federal civilian employees to be applied across the board in the executive branch. This action is necessary because the national budget is out of control. Estimates of Federal spending for fiscal years 1981 and 1982 have -- in a single year -- increased by $100 billion. Last July, during my campaign for the Presidency, I pledged that we would take this action as a first step towards controlling the growth and size of government...