The Political Interest: Bush as Mr. Scrooge

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SINCE DEFEAT IS AN ORPHAN AND VICTORY HAS MANY fathers, it is virtually impossible to discern parentage of a lousy idea. Consider George Bush's proposal to cut the salaries of top federal employees. In a round of calls, the relevant players deny authorship of the President's scheme: The Bush- Quayle campaign refers you to the White House, which sends you to the Office of Personnel Management, where the buck is passed to the President's budget office. No one knows, and no one wants to know. Most claim they first learned of this idiocy when they watched Bush's domestic policy speech to the Economic Club of Detroit two weeks ago. Off the record, there is widespread chagrin -- and considerable sympathy for those in the bureaucracy's upper reaches who have taken to sporting buttons that say BUSH HATES ME.

Despite being widely hailed as a first (if late) expression of the President's vision for America in the 21st century, Bush's Detroit address was little more than a gussied-up rehash of old ideas. One of the few new notions was his call to slash by 5% the pay of career government workers earning more than $75,000 a year. (The White House won't say whether the boss would gut his own $200,000 salary.) "Other Americans have tightened their belts, and so should the better-paid federal workers," Bush told his Detroit audience of business heavyweights, whose own belts, of course, couldn't be looser.

At first blush, Bush's plan strikes a chord: few who deal with the government regularly have a good word for those they encounter. On reflection, though, the President's scheme is a heartless swipe at a defenseless group of dedicated civil servants, designed to capture the knee-jerk support of an economically strapped electorate. "It may not be good policy," concedes a Bush adviser, "but it's damn good politics."

"How could it be?" wonders former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. "It's another complete reversal of a previous Bush position." In the late '80s, Volcker's bipartisan Commission on the Public Service found the disparity between private sector and government compensation so large that many key federal jobs were either filled by mediocrities or not filled at all. Bush moved quickly to right matters. In his first speech after assuming office, the President told a group of senior employees that "government service is the highest and noblest calling . . . You work hard, you sacrifice, you deserve to be recognized, rewarded and appreciated . . . I want to make sure public service is valued and respected, because I want to encourage America's young to pursue careers in government." Giving content to his rhetoric, Bush pushed for large salary hikes, echoing the Volcker report when he said the "pay gap is affecting the Federal Government's ability to attract and retain the skilled and motivated senior executives necessary to direct . . . complex, wide-ranging and critical functions."