* USA Today reports that in the current recession where 7.3 million jobs have been lost in the private sector, "Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring." both. And what pay! Almost 20% of federal employees are now making over $100,000 a year "and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.""When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000...'There's no way to justify this to the American people. It's ridiculous,' says Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a first-term lawmaker who is on the House's federal workforce subcommittee."
"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."
* The Democratic-controlled Senate on Saturday cleared away a Republican filibuster of a huge end-of-year spending bill that rewards most federal agencies with generous budget boosts....
The measure provides spending increases averaging about 10 percent to programs under immediate control of Congress, blending increases for veterans' programs, NASA and the FBI with a pay raise for federal workers and help for car dealers.
It bundles six of the 12 annual spending bills, capping a dysfunctional appropriations process for budget year that began Oct. 1, dysfunctional appropriations process in which House leaders blocked Republicans from debating key issues and Senate Republicans dragged out debates.
Just the $626 billion defense bill would remain. That's being held back to serve as a vehicle to advance must-pass legislation such as a plan to allow the government's debt to swell by nearly $2 trillion. The government's total debt has nearly doubled in the past seven years and is expected to exceed the current ceiling of $12.1 trillion before Jan. 1.
Republicans said the measure — on top of February's $787 billion economic stimulus bill and a generous omnibus measure for the 2009 budget year — spends too much money in a time when the government is running astronomical deficits. "Obviously we need to run the government, but do you suppose the government could be a little bit like families and be just a little bit prudent in how much it spends?" said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz...
(Andrew Taylor, AP report, Yahoo News)
* The Obama administration won a victory for its vision of financial reform on Friday, heading off a rebellion by conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives to pass a landmark regulation bill. The legislation included a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, an innovation fiercely opposed by banks and some Democrats...
Walt Minnick, a Democrat from Idaho, who led the rebellion on the CFPA, which strips power from existing banking regulators, said: “You don’t achieve better regulation by splitting the responsibility between two regulators, in many cases thousands of miles apart.”
David Hirschmann, a director of the US Chamber of Commerce, said: “While there is a laundry list of bad choices that were made by the House, the creation of the CFPA tops the list.”
(Tom Braithwaite, Financial Times)
