STOP THE LIES: ANTI-LABOR TALKING HEADS, CEO'S AND PRIVATE EQUITY FIRMS WILL NOT SHAPE OUR FUTURE

Rochester, N.Y.--  Stop the lies right now. American working class families are not going to let them get away with it. At this pivotal moment in the economic history of our country – indeed, the world – we cannot stand by and let corporate CEOs and their media partners define the debate and singlehandedly shape our future.

Working families didn’t create class warfare. The facts speak for themselves: While median incomes in the U.S. have stagnated since the mid-1970s, incomes for those in the top 5 percent have more than doubled. In the past 10 years, with record-breaking tax cuts for the wealthy — incomes for the top 1 percent have tripled. Economic bubble after economic bubble benefited a small elite of CEO's and shareholders while private sector workers watched their retirement security and health care benefits dissipate.

Now, after annihilating private sector workers and the unions who represent them, the rich and the right have set their sights on public services and the men and women who provide them. We at the Voice Reporter are dedicated to injecting truth to the debate to give American families a better sense of how their tax dollars are being manipulated to oppress them.

Here are a few misconceptions about public employees:

The Claim: Government employees are overpaid.

The Facts: The Economic Policy Institute measured state and local public workers against their private sector counterparts with the same age, experience, and education. They found that public workers earn about 11 percent less.

Claims that federal, state and local government workers are overpaid often fail to account for their education and experience. Fifty-four percent have at least a four-year college degree, compared to 35 percent in the private sector.

The facts are clear: state and local public employees make 11 to 12 percent less in salary than those in the private sector, when education and experience are considered, as demonstrated by recent research by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence. Additionally, state and local public employees’ total compensation (including salaries and benefits) is approximately 7 percent less than that of private sector workers.

The Claim: The federal deficit is out of control.

The Facts: It’s true that this year’s budget deficit—projected to be 10.3 percent of U.S. economic activity—is the highest since World War II. It didn't help that conservatives, the rich and right wing politicans pushed for a tax break for the wealthiest Americans who don't need it.  Economists predict that tax break will add nearly 700 billion dollars to the deficit.  The GOP used small businesses as a hostage in the tax debate.  Whether you think the deficit is a problem or not depends on your history timeline and how we address it long term.

Short-term government spending was the only thing that kept the economy from tanking in 2008. If history has taught us anything, let's take lessons from FDR and the New Deal.  If Obama did not act after George Bush's failed policies, we would of been experiencing a second Great Depression.

With no private sector investment in sight and major banks being unwilling participants to grow our economy, public spending is the best economic engine for job creation in the foreseeable future. Aside from the pain created by high unemployment, no jobs means no recovery for tax collections and therefore a widening deficit and increased income inequality.  Above all, taxpayers need public services now more than ever as we struggle through one of the most difficult financial times in American history.

The deficit is a long-term problem if we do nothing, but before doing something most senisible obeservers know we have to look at spending and revenues. The bulk of federal spending is on the military (22 percent) and health care, including Medicare, Medicaid, and children’s health programs (21 percent).

The message has been the same
for the past 60 years.
photo by Ove Overmyer

 The obvious place to trim spending is the military budget, which is two and a half times what it was 10 years ago. Health care costs are also skyrocketing, because they are driven by for-profit health care.  Americans should be patient (no pun intended) for the health care provisions to be implemented.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the health care act will not add to the deficit, but actually reduce it.

The Claim: Taxes are too high.



The Facts: Depends whose taxes you mean. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, overall taxes in the U.S. are the third lowest among industrialized countries (only Turkey and Mexico are lower). Corporate taxes are also lower than in most other industrial nations.

But there are inequities—and they favor the rich. People at the bottom of the income ladder, the lowest 20 percent, pay almost twice as much of their income in state and local taxes as the top 1 percent. The poor pay 11 percent, the rich just 6 percent.



At the end of World War II, corporations paid more than a third of all taxes collected by the federal government. Today they pay only 10 percent. The burden was shifted to individuals, and as taxes on the wealthy were cut over the last 30 years, the liability has been transferred to working people.

People who abhor taxes are the same people who have no appreciation of how government and government employees have given them the quality of life they so desparately want.  You can't have it both ways-- remember this the next time you want your streets plowed of snow, your library institutes borrowing fees and you want that line at the DMV to go a little faster.

The Claim:  Outsourcing and the private sector is more efficient than government.

The Facts: Advocates claim outsourcing will save money. But after more than two decades of experience, the debate is hardly over.  See earlier Voice Reporter posts about public worker downsizing, outsourcing and use of temp workers in unionized municipal workplaces.

Cost overruns combined with the cost of contract monitoring and administration often makes privatization more expensive than in-house services. According to a 2007 survey by the International City/County Management Association, more than one in five local governments had brought previously outsourced services back in house.

In most cases insufficient cost savings were cited as a primary reason. And where contracting out does produce savings, they typically come from lower wages and benefits for workers who end up on public assistance that taxpayers end up footing the bill for anyway.

The Claim: Government waste, fraud and abuse are rampant.

The Facts: Absolutely no workplace, whether public or private sector has a monopoly on waste and fraud.  Government-bashers love to talk about overpaid, do-nothing bureaucrats, but if you’re looking for misused tax dollars your best bet is to scour the Chamber of Commerce’s membership list. Defense contracts and construction projects like the “Big Dig” in Boston hold taxpayers hostage with wildly inaccurate, often fraudulent cost estimates.

According to the Project on Government Oversight’s database of federal contractor misconduct, the top five defense contractors have racked up 156 instances of misconduct since 1995, totaling $3.57 billion in fraud and waste.  Does Dick Cheney and Halliburton ring a bell?