> -----Original Message-----
> From: CPBalto at aol.com [mailto:CPBalto at aol.com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 10:40 AM
> To: CPBalto at aol.com
> Subject: "Let's YOU Sacrifice" says our President.
>
>
>
>
>
> From the American Federation of Government Employees:
>
> STATEMENT OF AFGE NATIONAL PRESIDENT BOBBY L. HARNAGE ON
> BONUSES TO POLITICAL
> APPOINTEES
>
> WASHINGTON, D.C.-The day after Thanksgiving, President
> Bush told us America was at war and that rank and file
> federal employees would have to sacrifice a quarter of the
> pay adjustment that Congress had approved for 2003. Three
> days later we learn that no sacrifice is necessary when it
> comes tohly paid patronage jobs hig.
>
> As disappointing and indefensible as this disparate
> treatment is, it is entirely consistent with President Bush's
> issues of economic justice. Whether it's tax cuts for the
> rich or privatizing 850,000 jobs to boost the fortunes of
> contractors, this administration knows how to enrich the rich
> and to impoverish working families.
>
> This move is another demonstration of the Enron Syndrome
> that permeates
> this administration---one set of rules and numbers for the
> elite and another
> set for the rest of us.
>
> President Bush insisted that the single most important
> thing America
> could do to improve homeland security was to give him
> absolute authority over
> how to set pay for federal workers. Today he has shown
> America how he uses
> managerial flexibility. He lavishes $25,000 bonuses on elite
> political appointees, who already make $140,000, and slices
> off a quarter of the pay adjustment Congress recommended for
> regular federal workers whose average
> salaries are about a third of that amount.
>
> The people getting these big bonuses are the ones who
> have their jobs
> solely because of their political connections and
> affiliations. The folks who
> are getting the shaft are the regular rank and file federal
> workers who
> competed to get their jobs based on merit-what they know and
> what they're
> able to do for the American people.
>
> There is no justification for the President to use
> taxpayer money to pay political appointees for carrying out
> his political agenda. The centerpiece of this agenda is to
> ruin the lives and careers of 850,000 American workers by
> privatizing their jobs. The President's privatization agenda
> is not about saving money---it's about moving money away from
> the public sector and into
> the hands of politically well connected contractors.
>