After the Freeze: Real Reforms Toward Fair Federal Pay

Conn Carroll / November 29, 2010

President Barack Obama announced today that he will ask Congress to freeze federal worker pay for the next two years saving $5 billion through 2012. Good for him. This is a welcome acknowledgment on two fronts: 1) that, as Heritage research has definitively shown, federal workers are paid more than their private sector counterparts even after accounting for skills and education; and 2) that our federal budget deficits are driven by a spending, not a revenue, problem.

But while President Obama should be congratulated for this small step toward fiscal sanity, a federal pay freeze is not enough and far more than $5 billion could be saved be reforming federal worker pay. Heritage Foundation Senior Labor Analyst James Sherk writes: (more…)