While American families struggle to make ends meet under the effects of "Bidenomics," the president delivered a massive raise for federal civilian employees to close out 2023, hiking their wages more than five percent on average, in the biggest pay bump for bureaucrats in more than 40 years.
According to the Washington Post's story on Biden's executive order making the "historic" salary increases, the federal workforce "will receive pay raises averaging 5.2 percent — more in some high-salary areas — under an order President Biden signed" that "delivers the biggest increase to U.S. government workers since the Carter administration."
For the "close to 2.2 million people" in the federal workforce, the pay bump is "0.6 percentage points higher than last year's increase, which itself was the highest in two decades, and will take effect in the first full pay period of 2024," according to the Post.
The slap-in-the-face to hardworking American taxpayers in the private sector — who are of course on the hook for the cost of the wage increase — comes after "Build Back Better" and now "Bidenomics" caused inflation to surge to 40-year highs, sent interest rates to levels not seen since early 2001, and brought Americans more than 24 consecutive months of negative real wages.
Yet, for all the talk in Congress on the GOP side of the aisle(s) about the damaging effects of inflation and Biden's tax-and-spend binges, lawmakers on either side didn't seek to tweak Biden's plan to raise pay:
Congress has in some years adjusted the annual White House proposal on federal pay up or down. But this year, after Biden proposed the 5.2 percent raise in March in his budget for fiscal 2024, Republicans in Congress — engulfed for months in a partisan battle over raising the country’s debt limit and then in an internal struggle over the House speakership — have been silent on the raise this year. Absent any action by Congress, the recommended raise goes into effect by default. (via WaPo)
U.S. service members and military employees are set to receive a comparable increase in January, the Post noted.