I am not overpaid in a cushy job with a ton of benefits and a cushy retirement. I am a wage slave, beholden to the government for the outrageous costs of student loans and debt from a year of post-grad unemployment because of a bad economy, bad luck, and bad policies.
Where to begin...at the beginning I suppose. I moved to DC in 1999 to take an internship on the Hill. $2000 a month. Expenses for living in a dorm at one of the local universities...easily half of what I was earning...but I was gaining experience, right?
Then I got a job with a senior Democratic MOC. I took a pay cut, from my internship, to become a staff member...why? Because I respected the MOC and wanted to help my country move past the horror of Impeachment. I worked for him for the next five years. My salary: $18K, $25K, $32K, $43K, $52K.
Law school. A state school. A tuition waiver. But living expenses for 3.3 years, a summer paying rent at school and where I could find a low paying summer associateship (the economic collapse began in 2005 as far as my job searches could tell)...bar exam...debt of $87K including undergrad, $15K on credit cards, $15K for private bar loans...
But my MOC had promised me a job...so I moved back across the country to DC. I went into the office on August 3, 2007...salary, title, start date...everything was agreed to. Then on August 14, whether it be inter-office politics, budget issues, his senility...the job offer was revoked (detrimental reliance under contract law could have gotten me compensation had I sued the MOC, but i would never work in DC again...)...and so a year of unemployment.
Got a job at a federal agency. Consolidated my loans. Attempted to qualify for debt forgiveness for public service...the required income based repayments would pay off the loans before the forgiveness date (failure of education/debt policy Mr. Durbin). My agency only participates in Loan Repayment Assistance if the employee is an "essential employee"...with 400 resumes coming in for every 1 vacancy...no one is essential.
Fast forward to today. I've been living paycheck to paycheck for awhile now. Actually debt increased with a surgery last January...and then:
Rents in the Washington area have soared to the highest level measured in at least 20 years as an array of economic and psychological forces thrust people into the rental market after the housing sector tanked in the last half of the decade.
....
In local apartment buildings, rents jumped 8.2 percent -- about twice the long-term average -- to $1,643 this year as vacancies disappeared, according to a study to be released next week by Delta Associates, a Alexandria-based research firm. The area's vacancy rates are the second-lowest in the nation, after New York City.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Sure, somebody with no empathy is going to say "you should have gotten a roomate"...but at 30+, why should I be forced to share my space with anyone? This is a failure of housing policy in DC, of urban policy, of federal wages, and of the Congressionally enacted Height Act.
The Height Act prevents any building in DC from being higher than the Washington Monument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
This debatably, and in my personal opinion, has the effect of artificially increasing demand on apartment and other housing space, by limiting the number of available units, thereby also artificially inflating price.
Given the nature of urban and livable communities, one would think that Congress would want to increase the number of federal employees, who work downtown, who could afford to live downtown. But the rise of "luxury" apartments and condominiums in downtown DC effectively prices federal employees into the suburbs, group homes, or "transitioning" neighborhoods. This is the failure of housing and zoning policies to which I referred.
And at the same time...the GOP makes federal employees the scapegoat for a budget bloated by a War of Choice and a War of Questionable Necessity.
More and more, when politicians talk about government employees - whether they are federal, state or local - it is with the kind of umbrage ordinarily aimed at Wall Street financiers and convenience store bandits.
...
"We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and the taxpayers who foot the bill are the have-nots," Wisconsin's incoming Republican Gov. Scott Walker declared this month, as he raised the idea of stripping state workers there of collective bargaining rights.
...
Meanwhile, many federal workers felt betrayed when President Obama put a two-year freeze on their salaries as one of his first peace offerings after the Democrats' midterm election losses. The move, which will save $5 billion over the next two years, barely dents a federal deficit that has been running more than $1 trillion annually.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
But it's worse than a simple COLA freeze. Our insurance is going up.
The average increase for enrollees in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program will be 7.2 percent, the Office of Personnel Management said Friday. That's significantly more than their (proposed, now frozen) average pay raise, which is slated to be 1.4 percent in 2011.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Our rents are going up.
In local apartment buildings, rents jumped 8.2 percent -- about twice the long-term average -- to $1,643 this year as vacancies disappeared, according to a study to be released next week by Delta Associates, a Alexandria-based research firm.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
And this is the real kicker. In spite of the American public believing this:
Three-quarters of those who were surveyed in an October Washington Post poll said they believe federal workers get better pay and benefits than people doing similar jobs outside the government, and 52 percent said government employees are overpaid.
When the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this month sampled public opinion on the major proposals that were put forward by the president's deficit and debt reduction commission, the most popular by far - and the only one deemed "totally acceptable" by a majority of respondents - was freezing the salaries of federal employees and members of Congress for three years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
This is the reality of the situation:
Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate federal employees were paid 24 percent less on average than their private sector counterparts in 2010, compared to 22 percent less in 2009, Allan Hearne, General Schedule team leader at the Office of Personnel Management, told the council. The report affects the 70 percent of the federal workforce paid under the GS system.
http://www.govexec.com/...
Do you think I can honestly afford to have my salary frozen for three years? Legislative proposals make the threat even worse.
Chaffetz said he may himself introduce a bill that would cancel step increases and could also prescribe limits or cuts to the size of the federal work force. He said that bill could come next year, after Republicans take control of the House, but he did not have more specific plans.
"We were serious about a pay freeze," Chaffetz said. "It didn't take but a couple of days to figure out how to get around [Obama's freeze]. We have too many people making too much money, and we have to figure out how to do more with less."
http://www.federaltimes.com/...
Step increases are the automatic increases within Grade that occur on your yearly date of federal service anniversary.
Grade increases, which have also been proposed to be frozen, are merit based.
I net around $1600 every two weeks as a third year federal attorney. I pay 65% of my net to rent and student loans...around $1800. If insurance and rent increase over the next two years by 7% and 8% a year respectively, my pay isn't "frozen", my pay is cut.
And as I said, having been unemployed my first year out of school, making $15000 less last year than I did this past year, my debt levels increased. I netted $38K my first year as a federal attorney in DC.
This isn't sour grapes. This isn't a time to say "you should have done XX". This is reality. For me, for the five other new attorneys in my office, for new attorneys across government. For all government employees.
We aren't overpaid. We sacrifice to serve. Rents are too damn high. And Congress hasn't done anything to make it better. And right now Obama and Congress are making it worse.
We're underpaid. We're paying too much in rent. And we're being scapegoated by the American public and the Democratic Party on top of it.
Outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is mulling a GOP presidential bid, also sounded a class-war note last week on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal: "Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt."
That might sound like standard rhetoric from small-government Republicans. But at a time of staggering fiscal problems, Democrats, who have counted public-employee unions among their most stalwart allies, also are taking a noticeably tougher line.
New York Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo is girding for battle there, warning that state employee salaries and benefits are unsustainable at a time when the state has a $9 billion deficit.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Wall Street is to blame for the economic collapse that caused massive unemployment. The GOP and Reaganomics is to blame. Capitalism is to blame.
Government employees are here doing public service. We're not the ones you should be blaming. We're struggling, just like you are.
Peace. I have to get back to work.