American State of the Union: A Festival of Lies

[ProSense]

98. And for good measure:

The president who promised in his 2008 campaign to support a hike in the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011, and then did nothing at all to make it happen, says this is the “year of action” when he’ll move heaven and earth to get a $10.10 minimum. He will start, Obama told the Congress and the nation, by issuing “an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay their federally-funded employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour because if you cook our troops' meals or wash their dishes, you should not have to live in poverty.” Obama neglected to mention that only new hires – a small fraction, beginning with zero, of the two million federal contract workers – will get the wage boost; a huge and conscious lie of omission. The fact that the president does not even propose a gradual, mandated increase for the rest of the two million shows he has no intention of using his full powers to ameliorate taxpayer-financed poverty. We can also expect Obama to issue waivers to every firm that claims a hardship, as is always his practice.

That's absolute bullshit. It will have an immediate impact on a half a million workers.

Executive order on federal contracting means real action on economic mobility

By Heather C. McGhee and Amy Traub

When it comes to boosting economic opportunity, President Obama isn’t going to wait for Congress anymore...the President made a powerful statement about employers’ obligation to reward work -- starting with his own obligation as the executive in charge of millions of federal contracts.

In a study we released last May, Demos found that nearly two million private sector employees paid with federal tax dollars through contracts, loans, grants, leases and health spending, earn wages too low to support a family. These are people working on behalf of America, doing jobs that we have decided are worthy of public funds—yet they’re being treated in a very un-American way. That’s why federal workers have been walking off the job for the last year...Now the President has taken a major step to lift up hundreds of thousands of those workers. In the process, the president will help families work their way up out of poverty and give new momentum to efforts to raise the minimum wage for everyone laboring too hard for too little in today’s low-pay economy.

The truth is that preferring contractors who pay workers at least $10.10 an hour will have benefits far beyond the workers themselves and their families. When our tax dollars subsidize and promote the creation of low-wage jobs rather than positions that enable workers to afford the necessities of life, there is a ripple effect throughout the economy: poorly-paid workers have less to spend in their communities, and businesses facing less consumer demand in turn hire fewer workers, stunting economic recovery. Low-paid workers also contribute less in taxes and more often need public benefits to provide for their families....From the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act onward, the idea that the federal government should be a model employer – and that employees working on behalf of the public should have strong workplace protections – has an extensive history in our country. The use of executive orders to improve the employment practices of companies granted federal contracts also has a long precedent. Beginning in 1941, successive presidents from both parties signed executive orders aimed at preventing employment discrimination by federal contractors. President Obama’s order raising wages for companies that do business with the federal government follows this successful precedent.

If the cost of federal contracts is a concern, the spotlight should be not on the employees who will finally see a raise to $10.10 an hour, but rather on the over $21 billion a year the government spends on the pay of their bosses, the top executives at contracting firms. After Demos put a number on this subsidy of executive excess in a September report, Congress included a lower maximum pay reimbursement for contractors in its December budget deal. But even the lower cap still provides executives a roughly $234.00 an hour subsidy. When you consider that our current contracting system fuels inequality through both lavish compensation for CEOs and poverty wages for front-line workers, it becomes clear where cost-cutting efforts should be focused.

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http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/196837-executive-order-on-federal-contracting-means-real-action

On the lower cap for maximum pay...

Varied views on new contractor-pay cap

By Josh Hicks

Federal worker unions have applauded a new limit on pay for government contractors, but one industry group has warned that the “arbitrary” cap will cause problems for those who do business with federal agencies.

The restriction, which came as part of the new budget deal Congress and President Obama approved last month, reduced the highest level of contractor compensation from its previous annual limit of $952,000 per individual to $487,000 per individual, a drop of nearly 49 percent.

The Professional Services Council, a group that represents the professional- and technical-services industries, said in a statement on Friday that the rule will “inhibit the ability of companies to attract top talent.”

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The American Federation of Government Employees has argued since at least last year for lowering the limit to $230,700, which would match Vice President Biden’s salary in 2013. The organization included that proposal in its list of 2014 legislative priorities.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/01/03/varied-views-on-new-contractor-pay-cap/

Obama pushes to limit federal spending on corporate executive pay
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022927167