Political Quotes

“If the gentlewoman would yield, we have just gone through an exercise and continue to go through a budget exercise here in this Congress with respect to Federal workers. So I have said to some Federal workers your struggle as a Federal worker is connected to the struggles of private sector workers, is connected to the struggles of public sector workers at the State and municipal level. And let me tell you about that. First, we have Federal workers who are facing a 2-year pay freeze. And they have accepted that because they are good public servants. Then they face the mythology of people who say that Federal workers are greatly overpaid when it comes to the private sector. But just as in Wisconsin, when you examine deeply the work that the workers do, you examine their job skills compared to the private sector job skills, and what you find is in fact they are greatly underpaid in the same job categories requiring the same skills and education as their private sector counterparts. Now, I don't want to suggest, Mr. Speaker, that in fact private sector workers have made out like bandits over the last 20 years, because what we know is that private sector workers, including the organized workforce, have faced stagnant wages and benefits over the course of the last two decades.”