[StBernard] Conservative Review - Who Should Pay the Piper?

[Westley Annis]

THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - March 12, 2010

Who Should Pay the Piper?
by Pat Buchanan 

Greece this past weekend saw the worst rioting since the 
debt crisis began. After Athens had announced new tax 
hikes and budget cuts to reduce a deficit of 13 percent 
of gross domestic product, mobs drove guards from Greece's 
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and attacked police. 

In our own country, students, teachers and administrators 
at UC-Berkeley held a "Strike and Day of Action to Defend 
Education" to demand more money from taxpayers -- for 
themselves. 

How badly are they suffering?

According to Peter Robinson of Hoover Institution, 
California spends $13,000 per student in the state system, 
compared to $6,000 in New York. 

Yet riots in Greece and demonstrators in California do 
portend a time of troubles. For the budget cuts and tax 
hikes needed to keep the welfare states of Europe operating 
as populations age and fewer children are born will be 
staggering and endless. 

And, in the U.S., California is where we all are headed.

Nevada, Arizona and New Jersey are staring at budget gaps 
of 25 percent. New York and Illinois are not far behind. 
Michigan has an unemployment rate of 14 percent. Detroit 
is the quintessential sick city. 

Republicans may get by this fall surfing an anti-government 
wave. But they will soon have to reveal where exactly they 
propose to cut. 

Fortunately, good politics and good policy give the same 
answer. USA Today's lead story on Friday -- "It Pays to 
Work for Uncle Sam" -- contrasted the wages and benefits 
of federal workers with those of employees in the private 
sector. 

Using federal figures from 2008, reporter Dennis Cauchon 
found: 

U.S. government workers earned an average salary of $67,691 
for occupations that exist in both government and the 
private sector, which was $7,600 a year more than workers 
in the private sector doing the same jobs. Health and 
pension benefits for U.S. government workers average 
$40,795 per year, but $9,882 per worker in the private 
sector. 

Nurses employed by Veterans Affairs hospitals earn an 
average of $74,460 a year, which is $10,689 more than 
private-sector nurses. 

Chris Edwards of Cato Institute has compared the pay and 
benefits of local and state government employees with 
private-sector workers. 

He found the average hourly compensation, wages and 
benefits of state and local government employees in 2009 
was $39.66 per hour, 45 percent higher than the $27.42 
per hour package of private-sector workers. 

Where 80 percent to 90 percent of state and local govern-
ment employees get paid sick leave, health insurance and 
life insurance, and 90 percent receive pensions, that is 
true of only 59 percent to 71 percent of workers in the 
private sector. 

These disparities suggest that government work is becoming 
a sweet deal for those who can get it, which may explain 
why government has begun to crush the private sector that 
has to carry the government on its back. 

Consider. Between 2000 and 2010, U.S. manufacturing, back-
bone of the nation, lost 5.7 million jobs, one-third of 
all the manufacturing jobs America had. But government 
employment rose that same decade by 1.9 million jobs to 
22 million, with three-fourths of the new workers being 
added to local government payrolls. 

States like California, whose public employees are among 
the best paid in the nation, are the states closest to 
chapter 11. Their last, best hope to close their deficits 
is a U.S. taxpayer rescue a la Fannie, Freddy, GM and 
AIG. But do the states merit a taxpayer bailout if their 
crises come out of their own continuing profligate ways? 

Writes Edwards: 

"Public sector workers... can typically retire at age 
55 after 30 years of service, as in California's CalPERS 
system. In CalPERS, workers receive an annual pension 
equal to 60 percent of final salary after 30 years. Public 
safety workers in CalPERS can retire at age 50 after 
30 years of work with benefits equal to 90 percent of 
their final salary. 

"In California, there are 6,144 retired public employees in 
the CalPERS plan and 3,090 retired teachers in the state 
teachers' plan receiving annual pension benefits of more 
than $100,000." 

And folks wonder why California is bankrupt. Should middle-
class Americans be forced to subsidize $100,000-a-year 
pensions for middle-aged California retirees? 

Yet, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, in that 
$787 billion stimulus bill, shoveled billions of federal 
tax dollars into California to pay salaries, pensions and 
health benefits of Californians who have been paid more 
than private-sector workers all of their lives. Where is 
the fairness here? 

Not another federal dime should go out to any state govern-
ment whose employees receive more in pay and pensions than 
the average worker in that state or the other 49. 

As for the U.S. government, Republicans should call for a 
one-year freeze on federal salaries and a two-year freeze 
on congressional salaries. If sacrifices are to be made, 
the people who had a fat decade at taxpayers' expense 
should make them sacrifice, not a ravaged private sector 
that has contributed almost all of the conscripts to 
today's 15-million-man army of the unemployed.