Cancelling pay raises

[Haruo]

Not that they need raises now that they're getting so much back from the IRS, but still, as I recently posted on FB,...

So what are the "serious economic conditions" that lead our leader to cancel government workers' pay raises? Is he trying to bribe them into voting for Republicans in November? Seems a back-asswards way to do it.

[[Added content: For those who may not know what I'm talking about here, when I went to look at Google News maybe half an hour ago, this is what I saw:]

I mean, he's been bragging about great shape the economy's in; "serious economic conditions" that need to be taken out of workers' pay? Mr. Trump? Is that what you said? Odd. Of course, if the Mexicans would just pay up for their share of the wall, none of this would be necessary, right Mr. Trump? This is what comes of letting the Mexicans elect Bernie.

[Haruo]

Had to scroll down twice to find it on the Fox News front page. I don't spend enough time there. It's skeery. Plays the race card, the Antifa-comin-to-getcha-in-the-night card, and features Exclusive Video of the president arriving in Indiana... eventually there it is...

[Haruo]

For someone who made his name with the line, "You're fired!" it seems to me Trump hasn't been very good at firing people. He complains that Mueller is on a witch hunt. Who has the power to fire the guy? Right. Has he? No. He complains that his AG didn't ever "take control of his department". Looks to me like he maybe hasn't "taken control of the United States Government" very well, either. And if canceling COLA is the best he can do in the "You're fired!" department...

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

That news hadn't hit the news cycle before the data came out for this poll. This reflects the week of revelations from Cohen, and the Manafort conviction. I heard a couple of Virginia Republican congressmen doing damage control this morning, being opposed to cancelling the raise and promising to do everything in their power to reverse the decision. Lots of federal employees in many different parts of Virginia, including some of the "red" counties.
http://fortune.com/2018/08/31/trump-disapproval-rating/

[KeithE]

[Tim Bonney]

The canceled raises are just more playing to his anti-government base. He runs down the FBI, the justice department, and any federal worker who doesn’t lick his boot. Cutting their salaries plays well to the anti-government sentiment among Republicans even while the GOP controls the whole shooting match.

[James]

I may be the only career retiree from the federal civil service on these forums.

Here is what I know. Republicans have called for dissolving all retirement accounts and privileges for us to be replaced by nothing. The congressman who proposed that I did was fired by his constituents.

Trump cancels pay raises to build a wall.

Trump wants to kill civil service to bring back the spoils system which guarantees that every employee will spend at least 50% of every working hour trying to get his or her political bosses reelected.

[KeithE]

[James]

Keith, I do not remember the details, but what I remember was reported in NARF magazine (National Association of Retired Federal employees several years ago). Maybe during Bushes time. A GOP congressman from Oklahoma proposed the idea. Fortunately for us, he never counted up all the federal employees and retirees in his district. He lost by a wide margin in the next election. If you know someone who saves their NARF mags for reference you might find the story. If NARF does not have it, you might it in USA Today. I read both sources on a regular basis and stories like this one tend to stick.

[Dave Roberts]

I have lived among a lot of federal retirees and civil service people in the past. Taking away their promised increases might be the fastest way to have Trump singing a new song, "Don't it make my red states blue," with apologies to Crystal Gayle.

[Sandy]

My Dad was a retired civil service employee who worked for the Department of Defense for 30 years and had a pension that included 6 years of Navy service. He wasn't someone who was inclined to "vote by the pocketbook" but he did keep an eye on it and was pretty active when it came to staying informed about what his state senator and congressmen were doing in that regard. Though he rarely voted for Republicans, he supported John McCain and Jim Kolbe, the Republican congressman who represented his district for years because they stood up for federal employees.

The district in Arizona that Kolbe represented was heavily Republican, and Kolbe re-elected frequently without opposition. That was until W came along and revamped the federal wage scale to cut jobs and salaries in order to give the rich a tax break. Then that heavily Republican district elected a young, female, gun-control avdocate, liberal Democrat named Gabby Giffords, and they re-elected her twice before she was forced to resign due to injuries sustained in a mass shooting. That's a district with a military base at Ft Huachuca that is the largest employer in the district, and Davis-Monthan AFB, which is fourth largest. Those are usually exclusive domains for the GOP but I hear that the Republican running for that seat is trailing in the polls by double digits, as is the former congresswoman Martha McSally, who is running for Jeff Flake's senate seat. In a state where the federal government is the number 2 employer overall, this isn't playing well.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

In the event that anyone thinks the federal pay scale is inefficient, or tilted toward the employees, here's a website with the pay scale information. It is calculated based on cost of living in a specific area, so the same job at Ft. Meade, Maryland may not pay the same as Ft. Huachuca, Arizona. Noting that a lot of jobs at military bases in particular are not directly under the federal pay scale, but are through private, for-profit contractors who pay less, and deduct larger percentages of worker salaries to cover benefits packages. And don't think those benefit packages are spectacular, either. Most of that is done by contract also, and while they are for the most part comparable to the private sector, they are not what most people think.

If you give this a little bit of thought, if the economy is as good as he claims it is, why hold back raises from a group of employees in the economy who haven't had one because your own party keeps lip flapping about "fiscal responsibility."? Federal wage increases would simply add to the economic growth. But of course, federal wage earners are middle class, and it is unforgiveable among Trumpites to do anything that benefits the middle class. They are the people on whom you are going to unload the tax burden so the rich can rake it in.

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversig ... -schedule/