Bad Economics: Cutting Federal Workers, Jobs
Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl doesn’t want to to pay for a one-year extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut by taxing the wealthiest 1 percent. He wants to take it out of the pay of federal workers.
Kyl is proposing to maintain the current pay freeze in place for federal workers and requiring the government hire only one new employee for every three who leave the federal workforce. A Senate vote on the the freeze-pay-and-cut-jobs idea from Kyl could happen as early as tonight.
Federal workers have already shouldered an enormous burden, contributing more than $60 billion to deficit reduction because of the current two-year pay freeze put in place about a year ago, according to AFGE.
Across-the-board pay freezes dampen the American economy, and arbitrary federal job cuts prompt federal agencies to privatize services and to hire expensive contractors, which costs taxpayers twice as much, according to a study by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group. Read the rest of this entry »
Fox News, Insurance Industry Say There’s No Health Care Crisis. Yeah, Right!
Maybe we’ve been ignoring the good news for these past several months as we’ve covered the debate on health care reform.
For example—there really isn’t a health care crisis and everybody is just gosh-darn happy with their insurance providers. Did we mention that the health insurance industry is doing such an above-board, honest job that it doesn’t need any new rules or regulations?
Somehow, we missed those stories, but when you consider the sources—Rush Limbaugh, the insurance group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.), perhaps the loudest voice in the U.S. Senate screaming to scuttle health care reform—we didn’t miss much in the way of truthful news after all.
Click here, here and here for more on the dubious claims by Limbaugh, AHIP and Kyl.
