Raising their pay is an issue all lawmakers can agree on

For all of its bumbling and inefficiency, give our government credit for the one thing itexcels at: taking care of its own.

As senators and congressmen shut the federal government and leave us on the brink of economic ruin with their game of political chicken, they still get their constitutionally protected $174,000 salaries.

One of the few agreements between the president and Congress, the two houses and both parties is that federal workers affected by the shutdown should be made whole with back pay when the government reopens.

No back pay for employees of federal contractors and others in the private sector left idle by the clownishness in Washington. Only government is shielded from the sting of government.

Nor is there relief for American taxpayers, who still work their jobs to pay the taxes to pay the workers who aren’t on the job providing the services being paid for.

On the state level, we see the same sense of entitlement that those in government deserve greater consideration than those not in government.

Hawaii is bouncing back from the Great Recession, but the Abercrombie administration calls it a fragile recovery that warrants caution, and the Legislature didn’t think the economy could handle an increase in the minimum wage for our lowest paid.

The private sector is moving slowly to restore jobs and pay lost in the recession.

The state, however, has unleashed a spree of pay raises for public officials that would make you think we’re back in the Roaring ’20s.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie gave unionized public workers raises in the 10 percent range to erase the 5 percent cuts they took during the recession.

That was chicken feed compared to what some higher up the food chain got.

State legislators took 33 percent raises for themselves in 2009 at the height of the recession, then grudgingly froze the rest of their 56 percent raises through 2013 recommended by a state salary commission appointed mostly by the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate.

The freeze ended July 1 and lawmakers received raises that elevated payfor their part-time jobs to $55,896 from $46,272. On Jan. 1, it rises to $57,852, 25 percent more than they made last year.

Also on July 1, state judges got previously frozen raises ranging from $46,736 to $57,113.

Lawmakers and judges arguetheir salaries were unfairly low,yet aslegislative candidates and judicial applicants theyeagerly sought the jobs knowing full well what the pay was.

Now, our elected officials’ idea of supply and demand is to pay for the raises by seeking"revenue enhancements" that force private-sector workers who didn’t get big raises after the recession to pay more taxes so government can.

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Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.