RightChange: Defense Gets Cut, Federal Workforce Untouched

John F. Kennedy’s famous words: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”  This rhetorical question is important for us to reflect upon during these times when our economic and national security is threatened.  There is one group of individuals who do more than just ask what they can do for their country. They do for their country.  These men and women are the ones who put jeopardize their lives to ensure that our country and our economy is secure.  They should be rewarded for what they do.

To pause for a moment of disobedience to Kennedy, perhaps it is important to ask ourselves what our government has done for us.  Whether or not we like it, President Obama has grown the government workforce.  Are you satisfied with the job they have done?  President Obama is.  His budget proposal for 2013 leaves their sector untouched and ousts 100,000 troops out of their job.  It also calls for an increase in federal worker pay:

“President Obama wants to give raises to people collecting federal paychecks, but in his new budget proposal, troops would get a larger pay boost than civilian employees.

The White House budget plan released Monday would increase federal civilian pay by a modest 0.5 percent, a bump that would end a two-year cost-of-living pay freeze. Uniformed military personnel would receive a 1.7 percent raise in 2013, the increase indicated by law, according to the proposal.”

While the President deserves credit for giving our troops a raise, he deserves a failing grade on cutting their jobs.  If times are so tough, why not cut from the bloated federal workforce AND institute a pay cut?

These workers are overpaid making more than those in the private sector and 99.49% of government workers were given a raise without regard to performance.  They also enjoy a 48% advantage over private sector workers when it comes to benefits.

Meanwhile, the men and women of our military fight in wars to secure our freedom and we are cutting their workforce.  Obama says, “We can’t just cut our way into growth.”  Of course that applies only when talking about our military.  We shouldn’t be balancing our budget on the back of those that do for out country.

Kennedy went on to say in his speech:

“We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty”

Obama’s budget does little to secure the success of that liberty and those that ensure it.

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