Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXVI

Two cheers for House Republicans, who plan on offering an amendment to freeze the pay of federal bureaucrats. There are two reasons, though, why they don't deserve three cheers. First, they should be proposing significant pay cuts, as nations such as Spain and Ireland have implemented. Second, they didn't do anything to rein in excessive pay for government workers when they were in power, so Stenny Hoyer actually is right when he accuses them of playing politics. That being said, I don't complain when politicians do the right thing for the wrong reason. Here's a blurb from the Politico story:

House Republicans will try to force a vote on freezing federal wages when Democrats bring a defense spending bill to the floor Friday afternoon. ...Even though the proposal would be attached to the defense bill, military salaries would be exempt from the pay freeze. The proposal would also freeze pay for members of Congress. ...Republicans say that freezing federal salaries — except for those in the military — would save the government $30 billion in the next decade. The Obama administration intends to increase federal salaries 1.4 percent. ...“We need to reject this cynical ploy to make federal employees a scapegoat for spending after congressional Republicans added trillions to the debt when they were in the majority,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) wrote in an e-mailed statement.