Time for a pay cut, group tells Congress, federal employees

FPI / May 18, 2020

Tea Party Patriots Action has launched a petition calling for a temporary 20 percent pay cut for all federal workers — including members of Congress.

“It’s time for the D.C. politicians and bureaucrats to put their own skin in the game,” Tea Party Patriots Action honorary chairman Jenny Beth Martin said in a statement. “If they insist on keeping most of America closed and crippling our economy, they should be willing to make sacrifices, too. There should be no special privileges for Washington in a national emergency.”

The Tea Party Patriots Action petition states: “Changing federal salaries requires legislation. Therefore, TPP Action is sending a petition to President Trump urging him to announce his support for such legislation, and asking him to work with Congress to pass it. … If the D.C. politicians and bureaucrats were forced to live life the same way they now demand that American citizens live theirs, they wouldn’t demand those changes in the first place.”

Washington Times columnist Cheryl K. Chumley noted in a May 15 op-ed the group's call is "good logic. Public servants shouldn’t be allowed special rights, above and beyond those of their employers — the taxpayers, the citizens, the private citizens of the United States."

Chumley noted: "If America’s farmers, say, have to dump and destroy their own produce and products because the restaurants and shops they sell to are closed due to the government’s orders — then why should members of the federal government get to tisk-tisk from afar, while collecting full tax-paid salary? After all, these farmers, these shop owners, these restaurant workers are the ones padding the government’s pockets. If farmers’ sources of revenues have dried, and so on down the private sector service line of those doing business with farmers, then it’s only fair the government — which takes its share of money from these entities — should face a cut-back in collections."

In hard times for Americans, Chumley wrote, "It’s one thing for government to close up private sector shops due to a national emergency. It’s another thing entirely for government to close up the private sector, dry up the private sector’s means of making money — and then turn around and demand, a la let them eat cake-like, full coughing up of tax dollars for public servant salaries."

Additionally, Chumley noted, "if tax-paid government officials suddenly see their salary levels drop by 20 percent, it might ignite some much-needed fires to reopen America for business. If public servants were now suffering the same as the private sector, there’s a very good chance the national economy would already be booming again — or at the least, on a path to rapid reopening."

Free Press International