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Morning Bell: Federal Workers Overpaid, and CBO Agrees

Written by Mike Brownfield Wednesday, 01 February 2012 10:12

economyinbrief Here’s some news that federal bureaucrats in Washington — and indeed around the country — don’t want to hear: According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released this week, federal workers are paid higher than their private-sector counterparts.

The “alarming news” hit the national media yesterday, but there’s a funny thing about the report. None of it is really “news” — in fact, The Heritage Foundation long ago uncovered the truth about federal pay. The CBO’s report this week was spurred in part by two years of work on federal compensation conducted by Heritage and the American Enterprise Institute.

In July 2010, Heritage’s James Sherk explained that Americans are overtaxed to pay the civil service. Salaries and benefits–for identical jobs–are 30 percent to 40 percent higher in the federal government than in the private sector. And in June 2011, Heritage’s Jason Richwine authored a study showing that workers who change jobs receive a substantially larger raise when they switch into federal employment rather than into another private job. In fact, Sherk testified before Congress on this very subject in March 2011, bringing the fact of the pay disparities to the House’s attention:

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