Pay for performance? Fuggeddaboutit! Congress keeps its automatic pay increase, and taxes, inflation, deficits, and the national debt all rise. Down Independence Avenue, Health and Human Services (HHS) bureaucrats get automatic pay raises and universal “outstanding” performance ratings.
(Footnote: take a laptop with you into HHS headquarters and its serial number is logged in and out by an armed guard. Apparently, so many employees are stealing government-owned laptops that “something” had to be done. But hey — they aren’t just stealing from the taxpayers, the elderly, and their doctors any more! Now, where was I …)
Meanwhile, my hometown paper reports that cardiologists have reduced morbidity of heart disease by thirty percent in the past ten years. Their reward? HHS gives them a pay cut. But wait, there’s more. In addition, HHS plans to cut its reimbursement rate by an arbitrary 21% for all physicians who accept Medicare patients. From all appearances, Nancy Pelosi thinks that’s fine.
Uh, where’s Sarah?
Perhaps the most significant grass-roots revolution waiting to happen will be propelled into the streets by the scandal of government employees’ gargantuan salaries, benefits, and taxpayer-guaranteed lifetime pensions (including for survivors and dependents) that are five to twenty times as generous as the Federal Ponzi Program. These are the overseers of the impoverishing of America. As a reward for their disastrous performance, perhaps we should cut all federal pay by 21% — per year, every year. Country’ll grow.
9:08 am on February 14, 2010
