W ashington, D.C., could take a lesson from Jackson County, Ala.
Jackson County is Alabama’s nearest county to Chattanooga, and its leaders evidently practice a level of thrift that has spared the county’s government from having to make massive, painful cuts.
Jackson County commissioners recently approved small raises for county workers, and its new budget eliminates a net of only one county job. Jackson County managed to accomplish that without dipping into its reserves or raising property taxes.
Part of the explanation for the county’s success comes from sales tax revenue growth from contractors at TVA’s nuclear training center and at Bellefonte Nuclear Plant.
But part of it is just plain common sense: Jackson County has decided over the years to live within its means rather than to spend money it doesn’t have.
As a happy result, despite the current economic crisis, the county is in reasonably good financial shape.
Now contrast that with Washington. Just since the end of 2007, the ranks of federal employees have risen by a shocking, unsustainable 240,000 employees, The Heritage Foundation notes. Total federal employment is now well over 2.1 million workers.
Those millions of taxpayer-supported workers earn wages that are about 22 percent more on average than they would earn for performing the same jobs in the private sector. When benefits are added in, average compensation for a federal worker is 30 percent to 40 percent higher than private-sector compensation for the same job.
Unlike Jackson County, which is funding its modest pay raises with money it actually has, Washington has forced our national debt up to well over $13 trillion to fund its vast spending. While some of that spending is necessary, some of it is going to excessive federal compensation and into unconstitutional interventions ranging from Amtrak to farm subsidies to make-work “AmeriCorps” jobs. And hardly anyone in Congress is talking about the runaway costs of entitlement programs such as Social Security, which is going broke.
It’s a shame that Washington cannot imitate the financial good sense that Jackson County, Ala., has demonstrated.