If a fat person declared that he was going to lose weight by eating exactly the same amount of junk food which caused the problem, we'd say it's stupid. If an alcoholic proclaimed that he was going to dry out by drinking exactly the same amount of liquor he's currently chugging each day, we'd say it's stupid.
And now, Barack Obama has suggested that his bold plan to reduce the national deficit is to keep federal salaries exactly the same as they are now. But we won't say it's stupid, because we don't want to be called racists.
Still, in an economy with millions of people unemployed, the president's proposed two-year "salary freeze" for non-military federal employees sounds suspiciously like a salary guarantee that the average private sector worker would give his left arm for. Moreover, federal employees are already receiving far higher salary & benefits packages than people doing equivalent jobs in the private sector (back when there were any).
In fairness, there is at least one report which claims federal employees are underpaid compared to their private sector counterparts. The report was prepared by...um...federal employees, and you paid for it. In spades.
But getting back to the point at hand, we're starting to think that Barack Obama doesn't really understand what a "cut" is. After all, he believes that keeping tax rates exactly the same as they are is a "tax cut" for the wealthy. But he also believes that keeping federal salaries exactly the same is a "wage cut" for federal employees.
And the truth is that neither one is a cut. These are political wordgames, and they're killing the American economy at a time when real leadership is needed. And we'd say that playing wordgames is stupid, but we don't want to be called anti-semantic.
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The Barack Obama miracle diet: eat the same number of "Fed Burgers" every day.
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