No special favors for federal workers

I feel compelled to respond to the March 15 letter by Margaret M. Murphy. Her argument seems to be that the reason we need to keep growing government spending is compassion for government employees and their families. I am truly sorry that she may be affected by budget cutting, but where is the outcry when the same thing happens in the private sector?

Over the past five years, many in the private sector have lost jobs, taken salary cuts, forgone any type of raise, including COLA, and yes, been asked to take furlough days. We do this to keep our businesses solvent and maintain our jobs. No one is particularly happy when these things occur, but it is the state of things in this dismal economy.

Government workers’ complaining when they are being paid out of the pockets of their neighbors is reprehensible. Taxpayers are being forced to pay for government workers to have better retirements than we can have ourselves. The government creates private retirement plans, IRAs and 401(k)s, etc. to save for retirement, but does not use them for their own employees. When bad government yields a bad economy, the private sector loses its retirement funds, but still has to pay for government worker raises and pensions.

When the government says we need to ensure the health of everyone in the country, they exempt themselves and their cronies from paying or using the system and raise the cost of insurance on the working private sector to fund the plan. The government and its employees need to accept the state of things as they created them and get over it. You are not better, nor more deserving, than anyone in the private sector. Buck up and go on as we are forced to do.

David J. Schmidt

Palatine