Overpaid?

The federal government reported Friday that on average, its employees are underpaid by 26.3 percent compared with similar non-federal jobs, a “pay gap” that increased by about 2 percentage points over last year while federal salary rates were frozen.

But wait!  Wasn’t there a Heritage Foundation study that showed that federal workers are overpaid?

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) took an extensive look at the Heritage study, however, and found that it was riddled with errors and “methodological problems that call into question the validity of its findings and recommendations.”

Of course, this won’t for a moment stop the Republicans from continuing their demonization of federal and state public servants. They want to make government service as unappealing as possible to starve the government of workers so they can kill off as much of the government as possible. The fact that cutting government jobs puts more people out of work, harms people who rely on government services (i.e. everyone), hurts local and national economies, threatens the social safety net and puts millions of people in dire straits doesn’t bother them. They don’t care.