Obama's rich bureaucrats: Federal workers get salary hikes while Americans are laid off

The Washington Times reports:

It's pure chutzpah for the president to move to regulate business salaries while the average federal bureaucrat earns $30,000 more per year than the average worker in the private sector. While unemployment has soared over the past 18 months and private-sector salaries remain stagnant, USA Today reports that salaries of public servants have increased, and the highest-paid civil servants have had the biggest increases in salary. Federal employees making more than $100,000 per year rose from 14 percent to 19 percent of the government work force during the first 18 months of the recession. Over the same period, the Department of Transportation went from having only one employee making more than $170,000 to 1,690 taking home that princely sum.

Perverse incentives are being inserted into labor markets by gluttonous government. Mr. Obama apparently understands the importance of high salaries to attracting and retaining workers in government. He just doesn't accept that the same logic applies in private industry and that in a healthy capitalist society, it is appropriate that workers are paid more in private business than by bureaucracies.

It's also disingenuous to predominantly scapegoat banks for the nation's financial mess. Government had a big hand in creating the financial crisis through bizarre regulations that forced banks to make risky loans. Government agencies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gave favorable treatment to banks that made risky loans to people who were unlikely to be able to pay them off.

You'll want to read the whole Times editorial twice.