– Editor’s Note:
As I have done for 12 1/2 years in publishing this blog and for ten years publishing the weekly Kleiner’s Korner newsletter, I post stories that affect residents here in Puget Sound, and did the same during the tenures of other Presidents, including Presidents Obama and Trump’s fellow Republican George W. Bush.
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This blog has reported previously on the Trump Administration’s burgeoning debt issues that will begin to be felt by Puget Sound residents this Fall. As an example, last week’s decision by the President to cancel scheduled pay raises for most federal employees [as an example, this will impact 53,211 in WA. state]. The other two stories that this state will have to watch are:
1. loosening penalties on corporate violators (i.e. Wall Street, polluters, businesses shortchanging workers),
2. a report that Trump’s marijuana task force ordered to ignore data that shows positive impacts.
After an ill-advised $1.5-trillion tax cut 9 months ago and his signing a mammoth $1.3-trillion spending bill 5 months ago, President Trump all of the sudden wants to get fiscally responsible in reducing debt by placing this burden onto the backs of federal workers, As an example, he proposes to nix a 25.7-percent pay raise for localities costing $25 billion, a drop in the bucket compared to his tax cut and spending bill totals of $2.8 TRILLION, which are adding to the national debt. Then after that proposal, Trump announced plans to use his executive power to hand the rich another $100 billion in tax cuts by indexing capital gains to inflation.
Stay tuned!
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Bottom line:
This paragraph added September 2nd, 9:20pm, in response to a comment and for clarification.
The point was the explosion of debt that has occurred under President Trump where until last Thursday, August 28, he never previously mentioned government budget concerns, and then out-of-the-blue just before a Labor Day holiday weekend, decides to announce slashing $25 billion in pay raises for 1.8 million federal workers he says was meant to cut billions from the federal deficit, then announces that same afternoon he will propose give the wealthiest top 1% another $100 billion in tax cuts by indexing capital gains to inflation. That puts an undue burden on federal employees in cutting the budget deficit. We’ll see if he walks back this proposal after his announced weekend contemplation following much blow-back last Friday from Republican officials.
1. Pay raises for federal employees are canceled
“Trump cancels scheduled pay raises for most federal employees”
“In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Trump claimed “federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases.”
“President Donald Trump announced Thursday [Aug. 30] that he was canceling pay raises for most federal employees that had been set to go into effect in January, citing government budget concerns.”
“In the letter, Trump said a 25.7-percent pay raise for localities, as well as a 2.1-percent pay increase for across-the-board pay, both scheduled for January 2019, would add billions to the federal deficit. Specifically, he pointed to the scheduled locality pay raise as costing $25 billion.”
“The move comes just nine months after Trump signed his $1.5-trillion tax cut bill into law and five months after he signed a mammoth $1.3-trillion spending bill.”
“The combined effect of both bills is expected to send the government’s budget deficit toward the $1 trillion mark next year, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. Deficits would grow to $1.5 trillion by 2028, the report projected, and could exceed $2 trillion if the tax cuts are fully extended and if Washington doesn’t cut spending,” by Adam Edelman, NBC News.
Read more
– “Just Hours After Ordering Pay Cut for Millions of Public Workers, Trump Proposes $100 Billion Gift to Richest 1%”
“Trump wants to send another kiss to the rich—unilaterally, without any approval from Congress. He ignores the law, governs for the top one percent, and doesn’t give a hoot about the rest of us.
“Hours after he launched yet another “direct attack” on workers by canceling a modest pay raise for around two million federal employees, President Donald Trump told Bloomberg on Thursday [Aug. 30] that he is considering a regressive and possibly illegal plan to use his executive power to hand the rich another $100 billion in tax cuts by indexing capital gains to inflation,” by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams.
Read more
– “Trump says he’ll ‘study’ his decision to cancel federal pay raises”
“The comments come after his Thursday pay freeze announcement was met with heavy criticism from several lawmakers, including some Republicans.”
by Adam Edelman, NBC News.
Read more
– “President Trump’s cynical pay freeze”
Op-Ed in the Washington Post.
Read more
2. Trump Admin. easing penalties for businesses that violate federal laws
– “Trump hits corporate violators — with a feather”
“Obama came down hard on offenders. But from Wall Street to polluters to businesses shortchanging workers, this administration is using a lighter touch.”
“A business that violates federal law — by failing to pay overtime, fouling the air, or committing financial fraud — could have an easier time avoiding the harshest penalties under the Trump administration if it agrees to come forward and cooperate with authorities.”
“But consumer advocates respond that the changes will give companies a bigger menu of options to avoid serious consequences when they break the law, by Suzy Khimm, NBC News.
Read more
3. New documents show Trump Admin. to wage fierce war against marijuana
– “Trump’s marijuana task force ordered to ignore data that shows positive impacts: report”
“New documents reveal that the Trump administration plans on waging a fierce war against marijuana”
“New documents reveal that, despite President Donald Trump saying in June that he would support a bipartisan bill which would allow states that have legalized marijuana to continue doing so without the US government getting in the way, the Trump administration very much plans on waging a campaign against the popular drug,” by Matthew Rozsa, Salon Magazine.
Read more
Editor’s note: Washington was the first state to legalize marijuana.
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Is President Trump’s pay cut for the just over 50,000 federal civilian employees in WA State really a cause for concern?
Comparison of Federal Civilian Workers to the Private Sector:
According to a Study by the Congressional Budget Office in for the 2011-2015 period, the difference between the wages, benefits, and total compensation of federal civilian employees and those of similar private-sector employees varied widely depending on the employees’ educational attainment.
• Federal civilian workers whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree earned 5 percent more, on average, in the federal government than in the private sector
• Federal civilian workers with no more than a high school education earned 34 percent more, on average, than similar workers in the private sector.
• By contrast, federal workers with a professional degree or doctorate earned 24 percent less, on average, than their private-sector counterparts.
Furthermore, the benefit packages for Federal civilian sector workers are even more revealing:
Benefits:
During the 2011–2015 period, the federal and private sectors differed much more with regard to the costs that employers incurred in providing current and future benefits—including health insurance, retirement benefits, and paid leave—than they did with regard to wages. Again, the extent of that difference varied according to workers’ educational attainment:
• Average benefits were 52 percent higher for federal employees whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree than for similar private-sector employees.
• Average benefits were 93 percent higher for federal employees with no more than a high school education than for their private-sector counterparts.
• Among employees with a doctorate or professional degree, by contrast, average benefits were about the same in the two sectors.
Overall, the federal government paid 17 percent more in total compensation than it would have if average compensation had been comparable with that in the private sector, after accounting for certain observable characteristics of workers.
From these figures, although not an expert, I might extrapolate that President Trump’s pay cut of 2.1% across-the-board pay increase beginning on Jan. 1, 2019 is no case for alarm here in WA State except for perhaps the most educated civilian government employees.
Trump says the pay freeze “will not materially affect our ability to attract and retain a well qualified federal workforce.” This may be true of the majority of the federal civilian workforce, but it may not be true of those employees with doctorates and professional degrees and we may run the risk of losing them to the private sector. It is unclear as to whether he intends to do something about this discrepancy in saying the government would focus on “recruiting, retaining and rewarding high-performing federal employees and those with critical skill sets.” Further analysis is needed in this category.
More here:
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52637
The Military:
The above article fails to mention the pay increase for Military personnel in WA State. Pay for military personnel her is WA State will not be affected by Trump’s decree; instead, US troops are due a 2.6% pay increase next year.
WA State is one of the states with the highest number of military personnel due to our army and naval bases. More than half of all Federal workers in Washington State are members of the military. The recently passed fiscal 2018 defense authorization bill has the largest pay raise for troops in the past eight years.
This translates into about a $680 annual boost from 2017 pay for younger enlisted ranks, and about $1,080 a year for more senior enlisted and junior officers. A mid-career officer will see almost $2,000 a year extra under the plan.
Thurston County:
In Thurston County, the majority of these jobs occur at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Although I was unable to find the year of these figures, and numbers fluctuate year to year, the base employs more than 38,000 military personnel and 14,000 civilians, making it one of the top 5 employers in Washington in recent years (ahead of Microsoft, but behind Boeing). Between 2012 and 2016, an average of about 3,700 resident active-duty military personnel lived in Thurston County, an increase from 2,000 people in 2000.
Comparison:
The current number of civilian federal employees in Thurston County is unavailable at the time of this writing. Since the figure given above in this article are state-wide, with an educated guess one might surmise that the number of those located in Thurston County is relatively small, although further research is needed for exact figures.
Private Sector Wages:
Perhaps we should be more concerned about the lack of pay increase for the common person in the private sector:
On the face of it, one would think due to the strong economy, that wages would be rising for American workers. U.S. unemployment is as low as it’s been in nearly two decades (3.9% as of July) and the nation’s private-sector employers have been adding jobs for 101 straight months – 19.5 million since the Great Recession-related cuts finally abated in early 2010, and 1.5 million just since the beginning of the year.
But despite the strong labor market, wages are lagging behind. In fact, economists are alarmed that despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.
Thurston County:
In Thurston County, according to current figures, salaries range from an average of $38,172 to $115,348 a year. This makes the average salary in Thurston County $66,355 a year.
In 2014, the last available figures for the average federal employee salary was in WA State was $84,153, approximately 50% more than the average private sector worker earned in WA State. This discrepancy increases to 78% when benefits are included. The average federal worker costs the government (aka taxpayers) $119,934.
In Thurston County, with several towns including Yelm whose citizens’ populations are 18.4% below the poverty line, ($19,530 per year or less) perhaps our focus should be more on how to lift the wages of the poor than helping what seems to be relatively well-paid 50,000 federal civilian government employees out of a State whose population is 7.406 million.
In conclusion, although this is not as in-depth a study as the issue of the civilian federal employee may warrant, it appears that Thurston County will enjoy the beneficial results of the pay increase of the military residents, whereas the lack of pay increase of the civilian federal employees is hardly a cause for alarm.
Paul Mikoloski
Thurston County Citizen
The point was the explosion of debt that has occurred under President Trump where until last Thursday, August 28, he never previously mentioned government budget concerns, and then out-of-the-blue just before a Labor Day holiday weekend, decides to announce slashing $25 billion in pay raises for 1.8 million federal workers he says was meant to cut billions from the federal deficit, then announces that same afternoon he will propose give the wealthiest top 1% another $100 billion in tax cuts by indexing capital gains to inflation. That puts an undue burden on federal employees of cutting the budget deficit. We’ll see if he walks back this proposal after his announced weekend contemplation following much blow-back last Friday from Republican officials.
Steve Klein
Yelm Community Blogger
The Ram has said that we have not seen a great leader in 20,000 years
like Donald Trump!!!
Why are you constantly finding fault with him?
Why can’t you see the great things he is doing for America?
Attitude is everything!!!
Love, Christine
As I have done for 12 1/2 years in publishing this blog and for ten years publishing the weekly Kleiner’s Korner newsletter, I post stories that affect residents here in Puget Sound, and did the same during the tenures of other Presidents, including Presidents Obama and Trump’s fellow Republican George W. Bush.
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