Where's the Green New Deal (or Old Deal) for Civil Servants?

Normally, I don’t like blogging about issues on which I have a pecuniary interest, so I should begin by saying “consider the source” when you read what follows.  Still, I represent a constituency that apparently has no champions in positions of power.  So if people like me don’t call out the facts, who will?

 Here are the federal civilian pay increases and the corresponding CPI increases for the previous year.

               Federal pay increases      CPI increases for the previous year

2019             0.0                                 2.2%

2018             1.4%                              2.1

2017             1.0                                 1.3

2016             1.0                                 0.1

2015             1.0                                 1.6

2014             1.0                                 1.5

2013             0.0                                 2.1

2012             0.0                                 3.2

2011             0.0                                 1.6

9-yr Avg      0.6%                              1.75%

In essence, federal civil service compensation has effectively dropped well over 10% during this decade alone, and that doesn’t even count the ways in which benefits have been cut in recent years or the way inflation-adjusted salaries have been decreased in past decades.   Moreover, these recent decisions to reduce Civil Servant compensation are obviously bi-partisan; just consider who was President during most of these years and the lack of outrage among the Democratic legislators who passed his budgets .   We all heard no shortage of crocodile tears shed by Democratic legislators during the 2018-19 Shutdown about the plight of the federal workers.  But you can thank numbers like the ones above for why so many civil servants were hurting so much in January. 

The rumor is that, as we speak, the Democrats and GOP are close to a deal to avert another Shutdown.  Do you think demanding a pay increase commemorate with increases in the CPI is something that the Dems are demanding as a pre-condition to do the deal?   Hopefully, that’s what is happening.  Yet I have seen no such reports in the media.  In fact, I hear crickets on this entire topic.

The fact is that neither party has shown much concern for the drop in compensation for civil servants over the past few decades, let alone the effect of that drop on morale and recruitment.  I’m not saying the two parties are equally unconcerned, but this time I’m not even going to bother to point out which one is worse.  Just look at those years from 2011 to 2013, when Barack Obama was President.  Where was the Democratic Party uproar then?  Where is it now that there are no more political points to be scored by raising the issue?

There is no disputing that, on an aggregate basis, the average civil servant is paid more than the average non-civil servant.  To some, that would make us overpaid – and indeed, many lawmakers cite the aggregate pay gap between the public and private sector as a justification for continuing to dock civil service pay relative to the rate of inflation.  But you don’t have to be an astrophysicist or a brain scientist to realize that it makes zero sense to compare the salaries of, on the one hand, a NASA astro-physicist or NIH brain researcher to, on the other hand, a burger flipper at Wendy’s or a telemarketer with “your local carpet cleaning service.”  The better comparison would be to compare the salaries of government astro-physicists with their analogues in the private sector, and do the same with brain scientists, economists, attorneys, or whatever.  But Congress knows better than to commission that kind of comparison.  It wouldn’t be “fiscally prudent.”

Clearly, there are more pressing issues in the world to think about than this one.  Then again, unless the topic is climate change, that could be said about any topic.  I simply felt compelled this week, now that we may be on the verge of another budget deal, to raise a concern that sticks in the craw of those “800,000 people” -- of which I am one -- that our nation’s demagogues kept talking about since Christmas.  Truly, this is just a microcosm of the way the members of our media and our politicians play games with us – selecting some issues to obsess about, ignoring other important issues altogether, and constantly tossing rhetoric around as if they really care.  Sadly, the American people know better.  That’s one reason neither of those groups is terribly popular with either side of the political spectrum.