It’s no surprise that Barbara Comstock, the Republican congresswoman running a super-competitive re-election bid in Northern Virginia, has expressed her opposition to President Trump’s public ruminations that maybe he should cancel a 2.1% pay raise for federal government employees. After all, her district is chock full of federal employees, and she had distanced herself from the president already, so she had little to lose.
But when Republican Corey Stewart, who has campaigned on the gubernatorial platform that he is Trumpier than Trump, differs with the president, that is news.
At the end of the day, one can predict that political considerations will prevail. This is a policy blog, not a politics blog, so I won’t waste readers’ time delivering an inexpert opinion on the political fallout. More interesting to me are the policy implications.
For Virginians wanting what is in the parochial best interest of Virginians, the easy answer is to say that canceling the pay raise would be a bad thing. It would have a materially negative impact on incomes and economic output in Northern Virginia, the economic locomotive of Virginia’s economy.
But there are subtler considerations. The Northern Virginia unemployment rate now is 2.7%. That qualifies as a labor shortage. The Wall Street Journal recently observed that cutting pay would create a win-win for the economy if a significant percentage of federal workers decided to quit their jobs and work in the private sector. First, the pay-raise cancellation would cut deficit spending by tens of billions of dollars. Second, it would help relieve the labor shortage in places like Northern Virginia.
That makes sense in the abstract. But here’s the trick: Do the federal employees most likely to quit have the skills in demand in NoVa’s tech-heavy private sector? Employees trained in IT probably likely would find it easiest to make the switch. But they may represent the only government employees that private-sector employees actually want. The complacent organizational culture of the federal government does not inculcate the attitudes that entrepreneurial tech companies are looking for.
Another concern: If the federal government’s IT employees depart, will the functioning of the IT infrastructure be impaired? Federal IT systems are not exactly models of efficiency and cyber-security to begin with. Are we prepared for federal IT systems to get worse?
Yet another way to frame the issue: Would the departure of a deputy assistant under Secretary of Agriculture be noticed by anyone or impair the functioning of government? Conversely, is there anyone in the private sector who would want to employ a deputy assistant under Secretary of Agriculture?
Cutting through the thicket of questions with no obvious answers, I would suggest that one issue should move to the forefront for Virginians: Will cancelling the pay raise ultimately advance the goal of diversifying Northern Virginia’s economy? Would such a move stimulate the expansion of NoVa’s private sector? Virginians should back any measure that emancipates NoVa from federal spending.
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