Posted on 08/11/2012 9:11:03 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The spending plan proposed by Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Mitt Romney’s pick as the Republican vice presidential candidate, has drawn strong opposition from federal employees.
Under the proposed House Republican budget, which Ryan sponsored as chairman of the Budget Committee, savings from the federal workforce would total $368 billion over 10 years. The two-year freeze on basic federal pay rates, scheduled to expire at the end of this year, would be extended through 2015 for a total of five years.
“The Path to Prosperity,” as the budget plan is named, also calls on federal workers to make an unspecified “more equitable contribution to their retirement plans,” which means higher costs to employees. Additionally, the federal workforce would be cut, through attrition over three years, by 10 percent, which equals more than 200,000 positions.
Because the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Justice and Homeland Security have so many employees, the majority of the eliminated positions would come from these agencies, all of which are related to national security.
The budget document says its plans “reflect the growing frustration of workers across the country at the privileged rules enjoyed by government employees.”
Ryan’s budget justifies the employee-related cuts, saying “it is no coincidence that private sector employment continues to grow only sluggishly while the government expands: To pay for the public sector’s growth, Washington must immediately tax the private sector or else borrow and impose taxes later to pay down the debt.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Because the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Justice and Homeland Security have so many employees, the majority of the eliminated positions would come from these agencies, all of which are related to national security.”
This is the old ploy used by Democrats in cities that needed to make cuts to stay solvent: “If we cut the budget, firemen and policemen will be laid off first.” They never want to cut the third and fourth assistants to the city manager. So they hold taxpayers hostage and the cuts are voted down.
And eventually the cities go bankrupt and firemen and policemen do lose their jobs when there is no more money to waste on those assistants to the city brass.
I’m a federal employee, and I’m cheering Paul Ryan’s selection.
The Monday morning “Occupy Starbucks” coffee run with my coworkers will be interesting. They’ll be frantic.
That probably arises from the fact civil service rules are so new to so many states ~ the old spoils system worked that way.
Postal workers are already overpaid $78 billion on their retirement plans and have been subsidizing the federal government the last few years.
Hear! Hear! You have my vote.
Not to rub this in but you haven't informed yourself enough on these matters to make comments.
My feelings exactly!
Could save a bundle by giving Civil Service System back to federal workers and eliminating the corruption and excess bonuses of the Senior Executive Service.
Good luck with that!
Word! I don’t give two flip-sh!ts what any Federal Employee thinks.
They added a block to our pay stub that shows how much the government contributes toward our health care, retirement, etc. I think that’s a great idea... most government employees have no idea the amount of taxpayer money goes into their benefits on a monthly basis. We pay almost nothing toward our own retirement other than the TSP contributions we make, but even then the government matches up to 5%.
Feds (I am one) need to understand who they work for.
Private contractors are accountable to their bids and written contracts. How can they forget the GSA guy in the bathtub?
My daughter works for a large county government. After growing up with our private business she absolutely hates the politics and prevalent work ethic. Seems like day care for idiots.
Actually, just to head that argument off, that's not the way it was done with the ORIGINAL states added before the purchase of Louisiana. In those states the federal government SOLD the land and kept the money!
Later on the federal government purchased every last single acre added to the United States ~ so that land must be sold and the money reverted to the federal treasury ~ not to the states.
Now if a state wants to buy that land, I"d expect market value, not book value!
‘everyone who is anyone knows that if you fired all the federal employees and murdered all the federal retirees in their beds, when you woke up the next morning you’d still be running a massive deficit.’
True, but it is a good start!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2917190/posts
.....[Paul] Ryan has spent much of the past year describing the election in similar terms—not simply as a referendum on Barack Obama’s presidency, but a choice between two competing, and very different, American futures. And Ryan has said he thought Mitt Romney shared that view. Here’s how Ryan put it in an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD on May 3:
“It’s very clear from his [Romney’s] last three or four speeches – and he’s very involved in writing these, setting this message – that he wants to bring this to a choice. Not just a referendum on Obama’s bad stewardship but on the American idea itself and a choice of two futures. It seems clear to me – because he’s embraced the kind of economic reforms we need to get the American idea back on track and prevent a debt crisis – that he is willing to bring this thing to the clear, clean choice it needs to be to give to the country. And that he’s ready to do that. And that for all the risk-aversion stories that have been written about him he seems to me that he’s gotten himself in the mindset of understanding the moment we are facing and the need to bring this real clear conversation to the country about the choice they have to make. And that these founding principles are really important. And so I really feel like – this is probably not the election he thought he was going to run, say two years ago when he first decided to run, but I think he’s become extremely comfortable and accepting of what it is and what it needs to be. Everything he says and does gives me a sense of that.”..................
God forbid that a government job might not be a lifetime of sloth and an even longer pension! These idiots think it is fine for the public sector to struggle, but talk about eliminating govt workers and they are PISSED!
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