Food for thought from USA Today:
Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.
Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.
The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.
If you needed it, this is evidence that George W. Bush was a prodigious big-spender, a big-government conservative. His successor vows to get that salary spending under control and has made some moves in that direction. While I am skeptical, there’s no harm in taking Obama’s actions at face value for the sake of argument. We just need to keep track of how Obama’s results measure up to his words. Hold him to those words.
H/t to American Thinker for the link.