LOL!!! These slugs should be getting a pay cut after what they did the last 8 years!...
FEDERAL PAY RAISES: Pay hikes show what Congress thinks of American workers
Livingston Daily.com | January 4, 2009
Remember, during the whole debate over a bridge loan for auto companies, how members of Congress kept saying autoworkers are overpaid? Some U.S. senators and representatives claimed United Auto Workers members were knocking down $73, even $75, per hour.
That led federal lawmakers, like U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., to call for a cut in pay for auto workers as a condition of the "bailout."
It turns out the figure was wildly wrong. You can only get to figures that high if you include all kinds of things not typically considered wages — health care, benefits, vacation time, pension costs, retirees' health care, etc.
The real average hourly wage for a United Auto Workers carmaker, straight time, comes out to something between $28 and $30 an hour. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger testified before Congress that average pay for assemblers in the auto plants is $28 per hour. General Motors Corp. recently told The Associated Press that the average UAW laborer earns $29.78 per hour.
Hey, that is pretty good pay. A worker making those wages and working full time all year would get $58,240 or $61,942 annually, depending on which number you use.
Yeah, that's a decent living. You won't get rich making that kind of money, but it is pretty good pay.
Still, it is a far cry from the $169,300 that U.S. senators and representatives were paid this year. If Congress members really work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks out of the year (and they don't), it is well over the $73 per hour rate they so objected to. It would in fact be more than $81 per hour, and that's not counting their benefits, their health care or their pension costs.
What's more, lawmakers are going to get a raise. Yup, that $81 an hour isn't good enough for them. They deserve more. Come January, U.S. senators and representatives get an additional $4,700 in their yearly paycheck, bringing their annual haul to $174,000. Assuming again, a 40-hour week for 52 weeks, that pay rate comes to a whopping $83.65 per hour.
So let's make sure we have the logic correct — people who actually build things, in this case automobiles, deserve a pay cut from their $29.78 an hour ... it is lawmakers who deserve a boost in pay to $83.65 an hour ... for getting their facts wrong when they debate issues, like how much autoworkers get paid.
Now, one could argue that pay ought to depend on how good a job you've done, and since the auto companies are in trouble, maybe the auto workers do deserve cuts. That would be rather callous. It would ignore a lot of facts about how the economy has turned and automakers were caught off guard, but you could make that argument.
So has Congress done a good enough job to deserve a raise? In this last term, it has presided over an economy that has melted down. That is largely the result of a regulatory system described as being in shambles. The only reason the federal government isn't facing bankruptcy itself is that it can just run up the federal deficit. Unlike GM, Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co., which have to balance their budgets eventually, the U.S. government can just print more money.
The economic pain these days goes well beyond autoworkers. People are losing their jobs. People are losing their homes to foreclosure. People who have invested in stocks and in their houses have seen billions of dollars worth of value simply evaporate.
And congressmen are taking a pay hike.
They've actually outdone Marie Antoinette. She said, "Let them eat cake."
Congress says, "Let them take pay cuts."
FEDERAL PAY RAISES: Pay hikes show what Congress thinks of American workers
Livingston Daily.com | January 4, 2009
Remember, during the whole debate over a bridge loan for auto companies, how members of Congress kept saying autoworkers are overpaid? Some U.S. senators and representatives claimed United Auto Workers members were knocking down $73, even $75, per hour.
That led federal lawmakers, like U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., to call for a cut in pay for auto workers as a condition of the "bailout."
It turns out the figure was wildly wrong. You can only get to figures that high if you include all kinds of things not typically considered wages — health care, benefits, vacation time, pension costs, retirees' health care, etc.
The real average hourly wage for a United Auto Workers carmaker, straight time, comes out to something between $28 and $30 an hour. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger testified before Congress that average pay for assemblers in the auto plants is $28 per hour. General Motors Corp. recently told The Associated Press that the average UAW laborer earns $29.78 per hour.
Hey, that is pretty good pay. A worker making those wages and working full time all year would get $58,240 or $61,942 annually, depending on which number you use.
Yeah, that's a decent living. You won't get rich making that kind of money, but it is pretty good pay.
Still, it is a far cry from the $169,300 that U.S. senators and representatives were paid this year. If Congress members really work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks out of the year (and they don't), it is well over the $73 per hour rate they so objected to. It would in fact be more than $81 per hour, and that's not counting their benefits, their health care or their pension costs.
What's more, lawmakers are going to get a raise. Yup, that $81 an hour isn't good enough for them. They deserve more. Come January, U.S. senators and representatives get an additional $4,700 in their yearly paycheck, bringing their annual haul to $174,000. Assuming again, a 40-hour week for 52 weeks, that pay rate comes to a whopping $83.65 per hour.
So let's make sure we have the logic correct — people who actually build things, in this case automobiles, deserve a pay cut from their $29.78 an hour ... it is lawmakers who deserve a boost in pay to $83.65 an hour ... for getting their facts wrong when they debate issues, like how much autoworkers get paid.
Now, one could argue that pay ought to depend on how good a job you've done, and since the auto companies are in trouble, maybe the auto workers do deserve cuts. That would be rather callous. It would ignore a lot of facts about how the economy has turned and automakers were caught off guard, but you could make that argument.
So has Congress done a good enough job to deserve a raise? In this last term, it has presided over an economy that has melted down. That is largely the result of a regulatory system described as being in shambles. The only reason the federal government isn't facing bankruptcy itself is that it can just run up the federal deficit. Unlike GM, Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co., which have to balance their budgets eventually, the U.S. government can just print more money.
The economic pain these days goes well beyond autoworkers. People are losing their jobs. People are losing their homes to foreclosure. People who have invested in stocks and in their houses have seen billions of dollars worth of value simply evaporate.
And congressmen are taking a pay hike.
They've actually outdone Marie Antoinette. She said, "Let them eat cake."
Congress says, "Let them take pay cuts."
