Key Vote YES on Preventing Pay Increase for Federal Employees

Dear FreedomWorks member,

As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your U.S. Representative and urge him or her to vote YES on H.R. 273, a bill to prevent this year’s scheduled automatic pay increase for federal workers.

It would be inappropriate for federal employees, including Members of Congress, to take a taxpayer-funded raise while the federal government continues to maintain a $16 trillion national debt that amounts to a $145,000 burden for each individual taxpayer.  And the potential raise is particularly galling when considering that the gap between federal employees’ pay and benefits and those of private sector workers has been steadily increasing over the past decade.

While median wages for the total U.S. workforce are decreasing, federal workers are doing just fine.  The average federal worker earns around $75,000 per year, while Congressmen and Senators earn $174,000 per year.  Meanwhile, the median income for all U.S. households, according to a Pew Research Center Study, dropped from $54,489 to $50,054 since 2007. There is no way that federal employees ought to receive a raise funded by taxpayers whose standard of living is actively decreasing.

Members of Congress, who have been spending our money lavishly, must learn to exercise fiscal responsibility with the taxpayers’ money before taking more for themselves.

I urge you to call your U.S. Representative and ask him or her to vote YES on H.R. 273 to stop government employees from receiving an automatic raise. We may count the vote on H.R. 273 as a KEY VOTE when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2013. The Economic Freedom Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the FreedomFighter Award, which recognizes members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom.

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe

President and CEO, FreedomWorks