GOP viciousness circle
by digby
You have to hand it to the Republicans. They are drowning that government baby in the bathtub. But they are taking down a whole lot of average working people with it.
The Scranton Times Tribune reports:
Amid Scranton’s ever-deepening financial crisis, Mayor Chris Doherty said his administration is going forward with a plan to unilaterally slash the pay of 398 workers to the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour with today’s payroll, insisting it is all the city can afford.
That will likely earn administration officials an appointment with Judge Michael Barrasse, who granted the city’s police, fire and public works unions a special injunction temporarily barring the administration from imposing the pay cuts after a brief hearing Thursday.
As Think Progress points out, this doesn’t have to happen:
Congressional Republicans repeatedly blocked efforts to extend aid to the states that would have helped shore up their budgets and keep these workers on payroll. In the case of Scranton, such aid may have helped the city actually pay its workers a living wage instead of a federal minimum that hasn’t been raised since 2006 and has less buying power than it had in 1968.
On the other hand, this will undoubtedly make people hate government even more than they do, so there’s a silver lining. For GOP sadists.
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