God Bless Our Stupid Government

Recently, I shared with you the results of a government audit that reveals just how much federal government employees abuse their sick leave. For example, the average IRS employee calls in sick 11 days a year! Now, the House of Representatives has passed a bill that would give federal workers even more paid time off - at least four, and up to eight weeks of paid parental leave whenever a family delivers or adopts a baby. This would be on top of any accrued vacation time, paid sick leave or unpaid leave the father or mother chooses to take.

I think parenthood is a wonderful thing. My wife and I have two children of our own - because we decided to have children! My employer at the time was by no means obligated to give me paid time off because I decided to have a family. Why should I, as a taxpayer, be required to pay for federal workers to start their own? I would not gripe about this if federal workers didn't already get more paid leave than they know what to do with. And I have less of a problem giving new mothers paid time off. They do, after all, have to actually GIVE birth, which - let's face it fellas - is something that we men would NEVER be willing to do ourselves.

Maybe what we need is another government report to study the issue of healthcare - like this one:

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Childrens Healthcare

The Federal Sick Leave Policy Is Making ME Sick!

Call me a hardass, but I'm not a big fan of sick leave in the workplace. I understand the NEED for it - I just happen to think that 75 percent of the time when someone calls in sick, they really COULD tough it out at the office if they wanted to, OR they're just taking the day off. Having said that, imagine my response when I read this in the Washington Post about how my tax dollars are being spent by "sick" federal workers.

At the Internal Revenue Service, one employee over a two-year period took sick leave on 13 of the 14 Tuesdays after a Monday holiday.

That's an extreme case of sick-leave abuse, but the IRS employee had plenty of co-workers who also liked to take Tuesdays off, a report by the Inspector General for Tax Administration found.
For weeks that had a holiday falling on a Monday, 27 percent of all sick leave at the IRS was taken on a Tuesday in 2005 and 2006, the report said. And 24 percent of all sick leave taken by IRS employees during non-holiday weeks was on a Monday.

You can read the entire article here, but it goes on to tell us that the federal government loses billions of dollars a year in lost productivity because of bogus sick leave. At the IRS alone, workers call in sick an AVERAGE of 11 days a year. So how does Congress plan to fix the problem? Bribe the workers to show up for their jobs! Virginia Rep. Jim Moran (perhaps my favorite interviewee of all time, by the way) is pushing a bill that would reward retiring federal workers who don't abuse their sick leave with a lump sum bonus of up to 10,000 dollars upon retirement. Moran says this will save the government millions, and I suppose he's right, but DAMN... If everyone in my (former) office called in sick 11 days a year, there'd have been a lot more people getting fired!

How do I get one of those federal jobs?