Federal Daily - March 5, 2010

Lawmaker Seeks Info on Feds with $100K Paychecks

The idea that the federal workplace is overflowing with employees bringing home six-figure paychecks just won’t go away.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member, is fanning the flames with March 3 letters to nine agencies asking them for details on their more highly paid employees, including information on how many employees earn $100,000 or more annually

The letters are a follow-up to a USA TODAY story in December which said that the percentage of federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent of the federal workforce over the last several years. The salary bump does not count overtime pay and bonuses.

The agencies from which Barton is seeking the information include the Departments of Health and Human Services, Energy, Treasury and Commerce; the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Federal Trade Commission. According to Barton, in one case, a large agency in 2007 had only one person making $170,000 annually, but two years later reported nearly 1,700 employees earning $170,000 annually.

The lawmaker noted that, according to the newspaper’s analysis, the growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal worker’s pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.

“This disparity between public- and private-sector compensation for comparable work leads us to question the basis for these salaries and raises,” Barton wrote, “especially during an economic recession when countless Americans have either lost their jobs or must accept sharp reductions in pay to keep their jobs.”

Labor leaders have noted that any increase in the number of six-figure jobs in the federal sector is largely accounted for by the growth over the years in the number of political appointees, as well as by increases in the number of senior-level managers. Plus, they have noted, the professionals who make up a large part of the federal workplace—including doctors, scientists, attorneys, accountants, engineers and others—receive far less as civil servants than they would get in the private sector.

To see more, go to: http://joebarton.house.gov/Newsroom.aspx?FormMode=Detail&ID=563.

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Efforts to Drop ‘Don’t Ask’ Policy Progressing

Momentum continued to build to eliminate DoD’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy—which bans openly gay people from serving in the armed forces—with the introduction March 3 of a bill that would jettison the 17-year-old prohibition.

A coalition of 13 senators, including Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., sponsored the bill, which would eliminate the ban and prohibit discrimination against current and prospective servicemembers on the basis of sexual orientation. The bill also would establish Reserve Officer Training Corps units at universities that currently prevent their establishment.

“Repealing the current policy will allow more patriotic Americans to defend our national security and live up to our nation’s founding values of freedom and opportunity,” said Lieberman. 

The bill comes at about the same time that Defense Secretary Robert Gates released guidelines for a DoD review of the policy in preparation for its potential repeal. The 10-month review should include input from service chiefs and all levels of the force and their families, Gates said in a March 2 memo to Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of U.S. Army Europe. Ham, along with Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, are heading up the review effort.

To see more, go to: www.defense.gov/news/CRTOR.pdf (Gates) or  http://tinyurl.com/y9frxnz.

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