Watching the Sunday talk shows today, guests have tended to say the GSA's spendthrift ways could or should stick to President Obama, while Secret Service philandering should not. There's a clear distinction being made between an episode of drunken misconduct by law enforcement officers with a history of heroism and the General Services Administration, which basically acts as the federal government's "back office," issuing checks to pay the light bill and trim grass around federal office buildings.
In my earlier post, I made a leap from the two scandals to talk about the war in Wisconsin between Governor Scott Walker and public employee unions over Republican legislation that passed last year to curtail public employee collective bargaining rights, increase their pension and benefit contributions, and make payroll deductions for union dues voluntary. I said that taxpayers and voters in Wisconsin were right to ask public employees pay more for their health and pension benefits, just as the now-infamous prostitute in Colombia was within her rights to scream about being ripped-off by that Secret Service agent who had refused to pay her fees, if for no other reason than to keep things quiet.
But if I may take myself seriously, I stand behind my original if hasty analysis. There is a growing cultural gap between citizens and the government employees who work for them. The GSA and Secret Service scandals should not be brushed aside as aberrations, but examined closely as symptoms of a deeply-ingrained, widespread collective dissonance. True, it may not be correct to say the GSA party planners were maliciously and purposely boosting the tab for their Vegas convention to show taxpayers who's boss. And it would go beyond the pale to suggest the Secret Service agents hired prostitutes for any other purpose than what they were intended for.
What caused these two entirely separate scandals to occur, shares a common but subtle root. Government has simply grown so large and so complex that now large numbers of public employees in thankless or invisible jobs no longer perceive they hold a public trust. For example, the belief that a GSA real estate broker should distinguish themselves from private commercial brokers doing similar work is lost. That the government, from the local level to state and national levels, is the workplace for a startling 17% of all persons employed makes it harder for them to see their jobs as "special" in some way, let alone owed to a public trust. As government employment has grown more commonplace, the idea of being held or holding themselves to a higher standard naturally erodes.
In fact, the vast majority of government employees see themselves as dedicated professionals, no different from their private sector counterparts doing the same kinds of work. True, it's unfair for taxpayers to treat government employees as less deserving of their jobs, but equally true, government employees should expect to be held to the same standards of ethics and propriety as expected in the private sector. And while the GSA and Secret Service scandals are extreme in nature and publicity, how can the public really be assured these were "isolated incidents" when the government is so vast and growing?
To sharpen matters, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has taken on the issue of public employees' cash-outs for unused sick leave and vacation benefits that had been allowed to accumulate in his state. Commonly called "boat money" because retiring public employees find their unused leave payments sizable enough to buy boats for their retirement, Christie is wondering aloud how most ordinary private sector workers never find themselves eligible for such enormous bonuses at retirement. Of course public employee unions defend the boat money payments because the accumulation of leave payments is a "benefit" earned under the union contracts it fought for and won on behalf of state employees.
But simple questions of fairness between private and public employment "classes" like those raised by Governors Walker and Christie will grow in importance if left unchecked, for the simple reasons states can not afford the premium packages and pay for the cash-outs without raising income and property taxes to cover their outlays. As pressure builds in the political arena to choose between raising taxes "out of respect" for government workers' promised entitlements, or cutting taxes to spur private sector growth to escape the current recession, the lack of respect-- even contempt-- shown by the Vegas GSA party crew makes it hard for taxpayers to vote for any politician who is sympathetic for what clearly has become a special government employee "class" in American society.
When the election starts to unfold as a choice between "raising taxes on the rich," as President Obama prefers to call it, or "cutting taxes on job creators" as Mr. Romney will call it, the real class warfare going on across the country between public and private sector classes of employment won't be lost on voters. The idea that Secret Service agents had been traveling the world toting guns and consorting with prostitutes and the GSA's pencil-pushers were attending team-building confabs over exotic buffets at lavish resorts makes it clear just who got to soak the hard-working middle class while the President goes on about making the rich "pay their fair share."
For America to have come to a point where working in the public sector (or in jobs entirely dependent on government contracts) is the preferred way to support a family and live a middle class standard of living should be of broad concern. Let's hope the scandals will spur a serious discourse on how to re-balance and re-nuance the nation's political and economic interests. As further scandals unfold and it becomes clear the "isolated incidents" were neither isolated nor incidental, the idea that agencies merely need to "clean house" will falter in favor, I hope, of a serious examination of the growing gap, not between rich and poor, but between public have-mores and private have-lesses.
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