Obama Hits the Easy Button

Today the President announced a proposed pay freeze for Federal workers for the next two fiscal years. This was on my list of easy ways to cut spending immediately. Glad the President was paying attention. From my previous post:

Really easy spending cuts:

• End all stimulus spending. Return all unspent funds to the Treasury.
• End all TARP spending. Return all unspent funds to the Treasury.
• Freeze the pay of federal workers, since the CPI stayed flat last year, so too should have federal pay, but it went up. (Full disclosure, I work for the federal government.)
  
• De-Fund all of the committees, czars and regulatory boards for Obamacare.
• De-fund the Department of Education, for starters, since it doesn't educate anyone.

We presume that a majority of federal workers supported Obama, certainly their unions did. One of those unions immediately opposed the move, of course. Too bad, federal workers are supported by taxpayers who are also suffering, a pay freeze is unfortunately equitable under those circumstances.

Interestingly some Democrats didn't get the message from this month's election and are also opposing pay cuts.

Republicans welcomed the pay freeze but it drew silence from most top Democrats.
. . .
Representative Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, offered a lukewarm reaction to the pay freeze. Hoyer, whose Maryland district includes many federal workers, said he would "review closely President Obama's proposal.

At least they had the good sense not to directly oppose.

There are those who will say that this does not go far enough in controlling federal spending. I wholeheartedly agree; but it's a step.