Petulant Plutocrat of the Week

One of America’s richest lawmakers — Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson — will this January become the new chair of the U.S. Senate panel that oversees the federal workforce. His agenda? Slash federal jobs and the pay and benefits of any employees who survive the cuts. Federal workers have just gone through a three-year pay freeze. But Johnson claimed in a post-election interview that they remain overpaid. The Tea Party multi-millionaire — he owns somewhere between $5 and $25 million of financial industry stock — is also calling federal workers “unrealistic” to believe they can avoid pay and benefit reductions. Last month, an independent study found that white-collar federal employees are now averaging 35 percent less pay than their private-sector counterparts.

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Originally published in Too Much online magazine.

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