House Freezes Pay For Federal Workers

In 2010 the federal government had enacted a two year freeze on cost of living adjustments for federal employees, an austerity measure championed by President Obama. More recently democrats had lifted that freeze and sought small increases for federal workers.

However on Friday House Republicans voted to extend the pay freeze for another nine months. In doing so they argue that federal workers should not get pay increases while many Americans in the private sector are not getting them.

But while both Congress and the President have championed pay freezes for federal employees at some point over the past two years, one group has gotten away with earning enormous salaries at taxpayer expense: defense contractors.

Defense contractor pay is currently capped at $763,000 which is almost twice what President Obama's salary is. Last December, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) inserted a measure into the defense authorization bill that would've capped these salaries to $230,700 -- the salary of the Vice President.

Unfortunately this measure did not make it into the final bill which simply promised to study the contractor pay cap.

Essentially the House Republicans are saying that hard working employees at the Environmental Protection Agency or Federal Bureau of Investigation should have their salaries frozen, but if you work for Lockheed Martin or Halliburton, you can continue to fleece the American taxpayers.