Thanks to Bidenomics, Americans are struggling to make ends meet. Food, gas, and other essentials cost significantly more today than they did under Trump. Things are so bad that voters on both sides of the aisle say that Biden’s policies have hurt them financially. According to the House Budget Committee, “the average family of four is paying $15,222 more per year for the same goods and services than when Biden first took office.”
In these tough times, it would be nice if Joe Biden embraced policies that would actually help the average American family. Instead, while Bidenomics is emptying Americans’ wallets, federal workers are getting yet another raise. Federal employees are getting an average pay raise of 5.2%, which is the biggest increase in federal workers’ salaries since the Carter administration.
“The salary hike for the federal civilian workforce of close to 2.2 million people is the heftiest since a 9.1 percent average raise in 1980. It’s 0.6 percentage points higher than last year’s increase, which itself was the highest in two decades, and will take effect in the first full pay period of 2024, starting Jan. 14 for most federal employees,” reports the Washington Post. “Biden’s executive order is the final step in the annual process of determining how much government workers will be paid the following year. That process has often featured a divisive debate in Congress over the value of federal workers and what they should earn compared to their private sector counterparts.”
Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress did little to push back against this pay raise.
Congress has in some years adjusted the annual White House proposal on federal pay up or down. But this year, after Biden proposed the 5.2 percent raise in March in his budget for fiscal 2024, Republicans in Congress — engulfed for months in a partisan battle over raising the country’s debt limit and then in an internal struggle over the House speakership — have been silent on the raise this year. Absent any action by Congress, the recommended raise goes into effect by default. Most lawmakers have already left Washington for the holidays, signaling the end of the legislative year and allowing Biden to finalize the pay hike with Thursday’s executive order.
Since about 85 percent of the federal workforce is outside the Washington region, “ … this pay increase will benefit families and lift economies in every single state,” Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement. “Higher salaries are essential to keeping these skilled workers in the civil service and helping agencies recruit new employees to their valuable public service missions.” The NTEU represents employees in 35 federal agencies and offices.
Why do federal workers get such nice raises while the rest of Americans struggle? Well, federal employee unions are big supporters of Democrats. And Democrats sure have come through for them over the years. “The federal government pays its employees more than they would earn in the private sector,” the Heritage Foundation explained back in 2016. “Economic studies consistently find that federal employees enjoy both higher pay and substantially higher benefits than comparable private-sector workers.”
The Heritage study found that federal employees receive 22 percent higher wages than similar workers in the private sector. Including the value of employee benefits, the total compensation premium increased to between 30 percent and 40 percent. The CBO found a small wage premium (2 percent), but substantially inflated benefits, producing an overall compensation premium of 16 percent. AEI found a 14 percent pay premium and a 61 percent total compensation premium.
Now you know who Biden’s really looking out for.
