Furloughs are looming, but the feds are still hiring

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Times:

The federal government is facing massive furloughs beginning later this week, but it is still running help-wanted ads seeking workers to answer phones — at up to $81,000 a year — or to drive cars for the State Department, for as much as $26.45 an hour.

Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and Congress’s top waste-watcher, sent a letter Monday to the White House budget office asking it to halt new hiring in low-priority jobs as a way of trying to preserve more important positions such as food safety inspectors and Border Patrol agents.

His letter identified 10 help-wanted jobs posted on the federal hiring website, USAJobs.gov, which he said could save as much as $1.4 million a year if the government canceled the hiring.

Among them were the staff assistant job at the Labor Department, which paid up to $81,204 a year for someone to do scheduling and screening calls; a new lawyer for the Morris K. Udall Scholarship program, with a salary of up to $155,000 a year; and a new director for the Air Force’s history and museums program, with a salary topping out at $165,300 a year.

There is also an ad for 10 “motor vehicle operator” jobs at the State Department, ranging in pay from $22.76 to $26.45 an hour for duties described as: “Drive and operate vans, trucks, and passenger vehicles on shuttle runs, special, long distance, and overnight trips; Perform maintenance and minor repairs on vehicles that includes but is not limited to changing flat tires and checking vehicle oil; and Assist passengers and loads and/or unload luggage.”

“Are any of these positions more important than an air traffic controller, a border patrol officer, a food inspector, a TSA screener, or a civilian supporting our men and women in combat in Afghanistan?” Mr. Coburn asked in his letter to White House budget office acting Director Jeffrey Zients.

The budget office did not immediately return a request for comment.

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Where the jobs are...

[Valin]

H/T The Corner: Sequester Cuts in Perspective

 

 

[clearvision]

It is a bunch of crap.

[Valin]

The Sequester Airport Shakedown

Jonathan S. Tobin

2/15/13

 

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been under fire the past few days for his role as one of the leading front men for the president’s effort to scare Americans about the sequester. There are good reasons to fear the impact of these across-the-board spending cuts, especially to defense, as Max wrote last week. But the manner in which the administration is attempting to claim that the country’s business will grind to a halt is prompting some skepticism about the sequester as well as the government’s credibility.

 

There’s no doubt the sequester will inflict real pain on the Department of Transportation and other government sectors. But Republicans are publicly wondering whether that pain will be disproportionately applied to services that will directly affect the public as opposed to other, far less vital expenditures that might well be eliminated without creating the sort of havoc that the White House has been warning us about. Who is right? We’ll find out soon enough, as at this point either side of this argument can say anything it wants without fear of being proven wrong. But once the sequester starts going into effect it will be possible to see whether the government is being straight with the public or not. That’s the danger for the White House.

 

Up until this week, the contest to see who will get the lion’s share of the blame for the sequester has been the main event in Washington. Part of that was involved in the White House’s effort to disavow the paternity of this awful idea. But now that Bob Woodward has blown that up, they are back to their main task of arguing that any suffering or inconvenience that stems from the measure will be due to the GOP refusing to accept the president’s demands and raise taxes. While talking about the long-term impact of layoffs or lower allocations for programs can certainly drive the argument about the sequester, Democrats also know that the way the cuts impact the daily life of Americans will be even more influential.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

If You Think the Sequester Cuts Will Tank the Economy, I've Got a Bridge In Brooklyn You Might Want to Buy

Nick Gillespie

Feb. 25, 2013

 

Or some prime real estate in Florida. Really, it's not swamp land at all. And those aren't alligators, they're dogs.

 

Our story thus far: Back in August 2011, as a condition of raising the debt limit by as much as $2 trillion, Congress and the president agreed to cut about $900 billion in anticipated spending. They also created a committee that was charged with coming up with an additional $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next decade to expected spending by the end of 2011. If Congress didn't pass those cuts, then come January 1, 2013, automatic cuts - a sequester - would kick in, split between defense spending and non-defense discretionary (with a light sprinkling of some even smaller cuts to entitlements). Congress failed to pass anything and then, when the 2013 deadline arrived, it pushed the deadline for the cuts to start to March 1.

 

Widely quoted as $85 billion for spending in fiscal year 2013 (which ends on September 30), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) underscores that just $44 billion of spending reduction are slated for 2013, with the rest coming in later years. So what we're talking about is trimming $44 billion from total federal spending expected to be $3.6 trillion this year. If you use the $85 billion number, that's about 2.4 percent of the budget. If you use the $44 billion, you're looking at 1.2 percent.

 

(Snip)

 

 

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So imagine what the hue and cry will be like when the Real Cuts in federal spending hit.