One works for the government; the other pays their way.

Michael Medved:

An astonishing review of federal pay data by USA Today shows a shocking rise in federal hiring rolls as well as government salaries. Since the beginning of the recession in December, 2007, private employment has gone down 6.3%, but the federal, non-military workforce has expanded by 9.8%.

The average salary for federal workers has soared 6.6% in just eighteen months, and now stands at $71,000 – more than $30,000 above the private sector average. Nineteen percent of the federal workforce now consists of six-figure-salary jobs, and 22,000 federal workers draw salaries above $170,000, an increase of 93%.

While the public rightly protests big pay packages for government-assisted banks that lost billions, we should be similarly indignant about all the new workers and skyrocketing salaries for the government itself, which is already operating trillions of dollars in the red.

Given our generousity, you’d figure federal employees would be the first to pay their taxes. Wrong.

Federal workers owe more than $3 billion in income taxes they failed to pay in 2008. According to Internal Revenue Service documents, 276,300 federal employees and retirees owe $3,042,200,000.

The IRS tracks the voluntary compliance rate of federal employees and retirees each year, and each year feds come up short. The one bright spot in this year’s report is that after several years of a steady increase, the amount owed by feds is down from the previous year.