TURNS OUT that the bankers who scored trillions of dollars in government bailout money aren't responsible for the federal budget deficit in any way.
Neither are the super-rich who will continue to enjoy an immensely lucrative tax breaks enacted during the Bush administration thanks to a bipartisan deal brokered late last year.
And don't point the finger at the Pentagon. The brass have accepted a $78 billion cut over the next five years--though they still want a budget-blowing $708 billion just next year to fund the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and maintain a military machine that spends more than all its rivals combined.
No, the cause of the U.S. government's record budget deficits is that greedy public-sector retiree who pulls in an outrageous $19,000-a-year pension.
That's what America's political leaders want you to believe, anyway. Thus, the Republican governor of Indiana calls public-sector employees a "new privileged class," and his fellow GOP counterpart in New Jersey has been bashing teachers unions for the past year. And the newly elected Republican governors of Wisconsin and Ohio are out to turn those historic labor bastions into "right-to-work" states, with laws restricting or even banning public-sector unions.
It's not just Republicans, either. Newly elected Democratic governors in New York and California have also targeted the wages and pensions of public-sector workers for further cuts, as a means of balancing the budget. And in Washington, as he was arriving at a deal with Republicans late last year to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, Barack Obama told federal workers they would be the ones to sacrifice--he announced a two-year wage freeze for all nonmilitary personnel.
It's the kind of bipartisanship only a boss could love.
http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/12/dont-blame-government-workers
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