The Federal Government is 5 trillion dollars in debt, and here we have the Chiefs of government with a proposal to raise the pay of federal workers by 3%. In my opinion, this is insufficient. Let us raise the pay by 4% or more. What?! That makes no sense! As usual, the devil is in the details. Much of our current budget debate is focused at devolving government from the Federal government back to States. While a laudable goal, the only achievement of this approach to governing has been political gridlock and the reality that the states are at times no better than the federal government when it comes to wasteful bureaucracies.
It is time to redirect the focus of the budget battle. If you can't reform from the top down, reform from the bottom up. Scrap the 3% pay raise for federal workers and institute a fixed process rather than fixed contract for determining pay. The advantage is that a process can have incentives to promote productive cost savings behavior that is not necessarily promoted by a fixed contract that basically provide no incentives other than showing up for work. Below is a rough outline of such a process. The numbers are for the sake of example only and can be adjusted, so long as one keeps the dual goals of promoting individual incentive and quality cost effective government in mind.
The average Federal Wages shall increase by at the rate of growth of the GDP (2.4%?) times one minus the combined percentage of debt interest paid and deficit budgeting. (For example with a 20 percent deficit, the Federal wages would increase 2.4% * (75%), or 1.8%. Ideally, there would be a reverse progressive adjustment so that those at lower incomes would get a bulk of any pay increase.
Additionally, if a program or department comes in under budget, the savings will be evenly split between deficit reduction/tax cuts and a bonus to the workers.
Of course, there needs to be some fine print on quality control. However, one might ask is there any system to monitor cost effective quality under the current system?
The approach of achieving cost effective quality by bringing the workers into the process has been found successful in industry after industry where it has been tried. Under such a system :
The federal workers would scream about any manager's attempt to spend every last cent at the end of the year on new office furniture.
They would think twice the red tape, new and old.
Federal Workers would see deficit spending as enemy, not an irrelevant budgetary footnote.
They would get serious about 'dead weight' that not part of the hard working team effort to get that bonus through delivering cost effective quality programs.
There are many workers in the federal payroll whose talents are being wasted by the top down bureaucrat approach to governing. Unleash the repressed talents of these workers and watch out. Instead of a measly 3% pay raise, the workers are likely to quickly identify waste or inefficiencies of 5% (or more).
Coming in 5% under budget, (with a GDP of 2.4%), would allow them 1.8% pay raise plus a 2.5% bonus for a 4.3% increase in pay. Let us not also forget that at the same time there would be a 2.5% reduction in deficit spending. This would not be achieved by "cuts" but by efficiency.
Also the next year, the federal workers would get a modest automatic pay raise (not a bonus, but a pay raise) related to the deficit reduction that they created the previous year.
What has been defined above is a simple self sustaining process for getting the federal budget under control by individual initiative rather than top down political edicts. There is a process that empowers the capable government employees to work toward the goal of cost effective government. Who knows, it may be possible to achieve a balanced budget much sooner than anticipated without the cries of CUT, CUT, CUT.
Too much of our political process is focused on bashing heads at the top. This has resulted in political gridlock that can be measured in 5 trillion dollars of debt and waste. Our nation's strength comes from recognizing and utilizing the power of the individual. It is time that our political leaders rest their sore heads and empower the creative individuals of this nation sort out the problems that our leaders have found unable to resolve.
Now you know what I think, what do you think?