Drowning Government One Employee At A Time

Grover Norquist famously stated that he wanted to "reduce [government] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." The purpose of that reduction, of course, aside from removing regulations that protect people from corporations, is to move government functions to the private sector--essentially outsourcing and "right-sizing" government, to put it in the corpo-speak of the day. A core Republican philosophy, after all, is that the government can't do anything the private sector can't do better.

One way to get the public on board with this stupid notion is to vilify government workers. If government workers are seen as lesser counterparts to private sector workers, the public will be more inclined to drown the government, as well. Republicans have been quite vocal about this for decades, particularly with respect to the schools. One prong of their attack against public schools, in favor of publicly-funded charter schools is vilification of teachers' unions.

Another prong of their attack is their contention that public employees are paid too much. As a result, Republicans are stepping up efforts to crush public employee labor unions. Truth is, however, public employees are underpaid compared to private sector workers. Republicans have to lie to make the accusation stick:

They say public employees earn far more than private-sector workers. That’s untrue when you take account of level of education. Matched by education, public sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts.

The Republican trick is to compare apples with oranges — the average wage of public employees with the average wage of all private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be - all need at least four years of college.

Democrats have to step up their support of public employees. It's not just because public employees and their unions tend to vote Democratic; it's the right thing to do.