[anniegetyourgun]

A significant decision, indeed. Here's to hoping he can find other salary savings in government through not backfilling on attrition, lots of job elimination through finding overlaps in the Homeland Security mergers, rooting out waste, fraud and abuse at all levels, instituting automated internal audit systems, etc.

This type of re-inventing government can have a major impact on budget and efficiencies given the cost of labor in the federal government. It's something AlGore never dreamed of when he was asked to take a look-see at the management of government. Perhaps he was too busy wiring schools to the internet he invented.

[hattend]

Congress got their raise. Guess they had to pay for it somehow.

[anniegetyourgun]

BTW, only in D.C. is an anticipated increase which has never been implemented, considered "a cut".....

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

The senate/congress? (one of em) sure did not get cut, they just got a raise.

[Torie]

Well Bush didn't have Maryland in his electoral strategy anyway.

[Salvation]

A time of war. It's time to bite the bullet. During World War II there was rationing of goods such as sugar, etc.

All I can say is "Hooray for Bush"!

[PhiKapMom]

I wasn't going to say anything since I figured people could read the article and pull out the following but it seems to keep getting missed:

"Call said the locality-based payments have rarely gone into effect since their creation in 1990, either because former President Clinton limited them or Congress prescribed other salary increases.

"The whole locality-based adjustment ... for the most part doesn't go into effect," Call said.

"The White House estimated that the overall average locality-based pay increase would amount to about 18.6 percent. Bush said granting the full raises would cost about $13.6 billion in 2003, or $11.2 billion more than he proposed for the year - a cost the nation can't bear as it continues to battle the war against terror."

NOTE: These pay raises are for General Schedule employees and are rarely implemented. The standard raise for years has been around 3%. The locality raises would break the bank and are not necessary. A GS-12, Step 10 now makes $70,000+ a year. That is not considered a high grade by anyone's account in the GS ranks!

[victim soul]

<"Earlier this month, the administration announced it wants to let private companies compete for up to half of the 1.8 million federal jobs."

I hope this means that there are going to be fewer gov'mnt workers for the next elections.

Sure would like to know the comparisons between the number of federal workers and private company's employee numbers.

I would suspect that many gov'mnt workers vote DEMOCRAT just to keep their jobs. While private businesses and self-employed vote for FREEDOM FROM TAXATION!!

[meyer]

I don't beleive that this affects TVA employees. FYI

[ctn]

Well Jennifer Loven must have pleased her liberal masters today. She's gone and zinged us conservatives but good.

I mean, it's not enough to say this is a salary freeze, which it is. Instead this whacky liberal journalist has to invent the notion of "slashing" a raise.

On top of a fat 3.1% raise in a depressed economy, federal employees would have gotten a bonus based on the increase in the corresponding private-sector wage. And the fact that they won't get this extra increase is cause for hysteria among the big-government liberal crowd.

Hoping to teach our mean ol' president a lesson, Jennifer blasts Bush throughout the article. It's "[a] blow to federal workers" -- Oh no, don't touch the fat federal bureaucracy!

Since the White House "quietly released the letter...[during] a long holiday weekend", Jennifer must have stumbled on Watergate 2002. Perhaps Jennifer wants the White House to kick back, relax and stop working during Thanksgiving -- ample fodder for a scathing AP expose on the lethargy of turkey-stuffed White House staffers, no doubt.

And the best part is buried deep in the article, where Jennifer embarrassingly includes the fact that these "slashed" increases almost never go into effect anyway.

In light of these facts, let me suggest a more accurate headline:

Federal Employees Won't Get Raise Which They Normally Wouldn't Get Anyway

[Squantos]

Guess them federalista airport baggage handlers are gonna have to put off buying that new caddy till next year :o)

Stay Safe !

[montag813]

God Bless GWB!

Stick it to the Democrat-machine AFSCME stooges.

[Our man in washington]

I'm a Federal employee. I think 3.1 percent is generous.
We have a bona fide national emergency, and I applaud Bush for making the right call.

Federal employees are paid adequately. Only a small percentage of Federal employees quit every year for jobs in the private sector, suggesting that pay is high enough to recruit and retain people.

When the Federal unions start commenting on this, they'll claim that Federal employees are underpaid 20 or 30 percent compared to equivalent private sector jobs. Such data are based on comparing what agencies claim a Federal employee does versus what a private sector employee actually does. The difference is due mostly to Federal agencies puffing up job descriptions.

Also, the data make comparisons that aren't valid. Yes, a lawyer putting in 40 hours a week working for the Justice Department is making a lot less than someone working 100 hours a week in intense private practice. Data studies will treat the two jobs as equivalent, however.

I would have gone with a 3 percent raise for those who got an "outstanding" performance evaluation, 1.5 percent for a "highly effective", a pay freeze for a "meets expectations", and termination for anything below that.

But that savings would only be a first step. I'd get to work on a plan to demand higher standards of Federal employees and to fire the deadwood and get rid of unconstitutional agencies.

[Mo1]

This law outlining federal pay kicks in because Congress has not yet passed the appropriations legislation directing a specific increase, said Amy Call, a spokeswoman for the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

Ok, stupid question .. but does this have anything to do with Dashole never passing a budget???

[concerned about politics]

Good. It's not the government who pays their wages. It's us.

[wharfrat]

If no respect of Persons means anything in this world at least everybody can share equally in their dissappointment versus the socialist system that promotes shareing the wealth. Consider this doing pennance like the rest of us in the private sector; I cannot remember the last raise or a cost of living adjustment I got, so this will make those feel humble and let them see what the rest of us out there in the ozone have to put up with. Another righteous humbleing experience that helps to deflate over active egos is to spend time standing in unemployment lines, works wonders with your humility!

[Highway55]

Bush Cuts Pay Raises for Federal Workers, Citing National Emergency

I believe this is called.....

gravitas \GRAV-uh-tahs\, noun:
High seriousness (as in a person's bearing or in the treatment of a subject).

[FreeTheHostages]

I support this. 3.1 percent COLA increase is consistent with the CPI this year. He's not scaling back locality increases: he's just keeping them at least year's level.

Democrats complain that President Bush doesn't ask the average person to sacrifice. Well, federal workers should do a little sacrificing: they're paid better than average, if you ask me, and many of them would be happy to take this. It's not like he's scaling back pay. He's just limiting increases to 3.1 percent. There's lots in the private sector who won't be getting even that.

I don't think many federal workers will whine. The Unions will. But I think a lot of good federal workers will be pleased.

[Republican Landslide]

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - Citing a state of national emergency brought on by last year's terrorist attacks, President Bush on Friday slashed the pay raises most civilian federal workers were to receive starting in January. Under a law passed in 1990, federal employees covered by the government's general schedule pay system would receive a two-part pay increase with the new year, a 3.1 percent across-the-board increase plus a pay hike based on private-sector wage changes in the areas where they work.

We have be a state of emergency vis a vis this law since the first year it was implemented. The Fedgov has never granted the locality increases supposedly mandated by this law, in good years or in bad. It seems like we have been in a constant state of emergency, every time it comes time to settle on locality pay.

To lay this on Bush is very disingenous. The current situation is about the only time the conditions for skipping the locality raises has been present.

BTW, I wonder if the author of this piece really filed from Crawford Texas, or if she is just using the dateline as a cheap shot, "Bush cuts your pay while he's on vacation, blah, blah, blah."

[Lancey Howard]

Okay.

1. A "locality based" pay increase of nearly 19% "kicks in because Congress has not yet passed the appropriations legislation directing a specific increase"

2. These "locality based" pay increases have "rarely gone into effect since their creation in 1990, either because former President Clinton limited them or Congress prescribed other salary increases".

3. Regardless of any of this, "raises still amount to more than the current inflation rate of 2.1 percent."

In other words, this story is basically about nothing. Arcane, really. So the following passages:

1. The White House quietly released the letter to journalists via e-mail late on Friday, the middle of a long holiday weekend when most Americans were apt to be paying little attention.

2. Officials of unions representing federal workers could not immediately be reached Friday night for comment.

3. Bush's pay decision is yet another blow to federal workers, many of whom are facing big changes in job descriptions under the Bush administration.

....betray the writer of this article, Jennifer Loven, as a real scumbag.

That's the Associated Press for you.