On the recordMarch 3, 2011
we have all watched the news stories--from Madison, WI; Columbus, OH; Trenton, NJ, and other places around the country--where public employees, when you really analyze it, are paid more or less, including benefits and depending on the place, comparable to the private sector worker. Whether they are high school graduates or college graduates or whatever, the overall pay and benefits are pretty similar. We have seen around the country that these public employees are in most cases willing to share in the sacrifice of balancing budgets and share in the sacrifice of fighting back against this bad economy. In fact, we know that workers--teachers, police officers, nurses, people working at the unemployment bureaus, people working at the Department of the Interior, wherever--have taken pretty big hits already in terms of lost jobs, in terms of no raises, in terms of paying more for their health benefits. So we know that even though these are not the people who caused the recession any more than the workers at Lordstown, OH, assembling cars or Defiance, OH, building engines or Northwood, OH, making bumpers for the Chevy Cruze are responsible for the failure of the automobile industry, there just seems to be, as we have seen from these ideological conservative Governors, an assault all over the country blaming workers, whether they are public or private workers, for the problems in this economy.
