Pay raises popular among Obama, Democrats

*First appeared in the February 26, 2014 edition of the Laurel Chronicle

Pay raises. That’s a popular phrase these days. Just this week, the Washington Post reports President Obama will propose a one percent pay raise for federal employees and members of the military for the Fiscal Year 2015 budget he’ll announce next week.

Obama is trying to put an “end to austerity” in the budgeting process by increasing government wages. Never mind the fact that’s not happening in the private sector, where employees have seen their wages drop by 0.2 percent during Obama’s presidency.

These pay raises come on the heels of pay hikes implemented under the current chief executive, such as the one that went into effect December 2013 via an Obama executive order.

An administration official explained the most recent proposal, saying it reflected the “tight budget constraints we continue to face, while also recognizing the critical role these civilian employees play in our country…It also recognizes the sacrifices they have already made through prior pay freezes, reductions in awards, and furloughs due to sequestration last year.”

I don’t disagree. Indeed, federal employees have been furloughed, have seen pay freezes, or experienced some combination thereof. But it’s worth noting the root cause of these budgetary restraints: A flailing economy which produced insufficient revenue to pay government workers. (And, very likely, a bloated federal government that should have been right-sized years ago. But I digress.)

The economy isn’t helped by the spend-money-we-don’t-have mentality of the Obama administration, and neither are government workers. (It’s ironic, in an Alanis Morrisette kind of way.)

In some ways, the budget proposal to pay workers more actually jeopardizes the government’s ability to do so. Why?

Because we haven’t gotten our fiscal house in order but continue to spend, spend, spend. This President and his Democrat counterparts spend money with simply no regard for its long-term implications.

Under the leadership (or spending-ship?) of Obama, the federal debt has risen astronomically. During his first term, the nation’s debt rose 83.5 percent. Now in his second term, Obama has seen to it that federal debt has nearly doubled under his watch.

Yet instead of trimming costs, he proposes we spend more money to “end the age of austerity.” I’ve heard more than once that spending money is the enemy of controlling spending. This is a textbook example.

But pay raises aren’t limited to national level Democrats; nay, the Mississippi Democrats are singing from the same hymnal. Just last week, Democrats in the Mississippi House of Representatives attempted (unsuccessfully) to add across-the-board pay raises for state employees to appropriation bills.

I guess they endorse Obama’s fiscal management policies. After all, he’s done such a great job balancing the federal budget (oh wait – it’s taken two terms as President to even get a budget, right?) and decreasing national debt (ummm, see above).

But Mississippians are smarter than to fall for those Democrat beliefs that we ought to pay government workers more than private sector employees. Mississippians understand the importance of a balanced budget and reducing debt by refusing to swipe the state’s credit card for every pet project.

They understand we need less, not more, Obama style policies in the Magnolia State.