78-08-B6

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Transcript According to the census bureau there are 218 million men, women, children and babies in America--of which more than half--124 million--are dependent on tax dollars for all or most of their income. Let me hasten to say we shouldn't rise up in wrath automatically assuming they are all parasites. Many are legitimate pensioners, social security recipients and, of course, government employees. But, with less than half the population supporting more than half (in addition to themselves and their own dependents) we need to make sure there are safeguards against extravagance, waste and/or cheating. What it comes down to is a work force of roughly 70 million or so in business and industry paying the whole bill out of their earnings. Remember that the private business is government's only source of revenue. True, government employees pay taxes but even those dollars first had to be taken from the 70 odd million. What I'm going to say now should not be taken as an attack on public employees. There are about 14¼ million of them with some 32 million dependents of their own and I'm sure all of us feel they too are entitled as we are to a fair days pay for a fair days work. Indeed we have insured that this will be so by passing statutes that government workers will be paid at a rate comparable to pay in private business for similar work. The President has proposed a five to five-and-a-half percent pay raise for all federal workers, but the increasingly powerful federal unions say this isn't enough. It's possible those union leaders are trying to justify their own existence by making a lot of noise. The fact is federal salaries through the upper-middle levels are well above private business salaries. The Commerce department says the average federal salary in 1976 was $16,201 about $4,700 higher than the $11,483 business and industry average. And the federal employees received a seven percent plus increase in 1977. It is apparent that comparability has been replaced by political considerations with regard to federal salaries. We can no longer afford unrestrained growth in the size of government or retention of personnel not absolutely essential to our needs. Government is the biggest growth industry in America. A $38 billion payroll in 1973 has become $68 billion in 1978. The old days of government employees talking about getting out of government to make money are long gone. In 1973 there were 5,000,000 inquiries about Federal jobs--last year there were 12,000,000. Government workers get twice as many holidays, have the best retirement program in the nation, pay raises are automatic and there is no question about job security. And, as federal salaries go up, the pressure at local and state government levels for comparable increases becomes almost impossible to resist. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 78-08-B6 Production Date 06/05/1978 Book/Page RPtV-315 Audio Youtube? No
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