Free Republic

Michigan made a giant stride toward bringing benefits into balance as the Michigan Legislature approved Senate Bill 7 which restricts local governments, including school districts, from offering health insurance more generous than exists in the typical private-sector job. If implemented appropriately, and the law allows considerable wiggle room, this ought to save up to $1 billion dollars annually and help keep local governments away from bankruptcy. Because local governments and school districts substantially rely on local property taxes to pay for their services, the continual decrease in housing values in Michigan will strain their budgets. This bill should help them...

"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...."

When President Obama thanked Robert Gibbs for his service on Wednesday, he suggested it made sense for his outgoing press secretary to want to go earn big money. "He's had a six-year stretch now where basically he's been going 24/7 with relatively modest pay," Obama told the New York Times. But at a time of persistent unemployment and a sagging economy, Obama's comments begged a question: Is a six-figure government salary really "relatively modest"? Opponents may see his thoughts on pay as red meat for the growing fight regarding public sector compensation. Mayors, governors and lawmakers of both parties are...

Public sector salaries have risen at a much faster rate than private sector pay for much of the 21st century. From 2001 to 2008, state government pay has increased 30 percent to $53,810 and local government jumped 26 percent to $42,327 while the private sector went up 17 percent to $43,833, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "It would be a good thing if money was just falling out of the sky," said Leon Drolet, director of the Michigan Taxpayers Association. "But it's not. Taxes are raised on the guy whose income only went up 17 percent for the...

On October 29, I wrote an article entitled, Taxpayers vs. Taxtakers, a Visual, using numbers obtained from the CATO Institute, that showed the huge discrepancy between what federal government workers (paid by tax dollars) are paid over what the private sector (you know, that group that President Obama continuously demonizes as greedy), the non-government workers earn. This latter group could also be known as the taxpayers who pay the taxtakers salaries.

FOR years it has been a workplace truism: jobs with fat paychecks are found in the private sector, while jobs with ho-hum pay but rock-solid benefits are found with the government. But research by the Employee Benefit Research Institute suggests that the truism has not been true for some time.As of June 2005, overall compensation costs were 46 percent higher for state and local governments than for private-sector employers, according to the institute’s research analyst, Ken McDonnell. And when Mr. McDonnell separated the cost of providing current pay from the cost of providing benefits, he found that government employees were...

FLASH: Congressional officials have raised the maximum basic annual pay rate available to House staffers to $156,848, nearly as much as Vice President Cheney's salary of $181,400...

Although a massive budget shortfall threatens the city's ability to provide even basic services, the number of city employees making more than $100,000 has risen nearly 60 percent since 2000. City officials blame lucrative, long-term labor contracts designed to keep the best and brightest city employees from jumping to a private company or another city for the skyrocketing pay packages. Many Oakland officials are among the best paid in the state. According to documents released last week by the city, 785 city employees earned at least $100,000 in 2003-04.