Kaine speaks to about 130 federal employees in the Fairlington Community Center in Arlington, Va., Aug. 1. (Stephen Losey)
Former Democratic Virginia Gov. and current Senate candidate Tim Kaine on Wednesday pledged his support for federal workers at a town hall in Arlington.
At the event — sponsored by the American Federation of Government Employees, National Treasury Employees Union, National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association and other groups from the Federal-Postal Coalition — Kaine said that waging war against public workers “is not a management model that works.”
“You and I both know that some — for one reason or another — want to make public employees the all-purpose punching bag in American political life,” Kaine said. “That, I find revolting. Those who would perpetuate the notion that public employees are somehow not willing to sacrifice, they haven’t been paying attention. Public employees have sacrificed a lot. Pay freezes happen at all levels. The right attitude is, thank you so much for hanging with us.”
Kaine also said that as the government tries to cut its costs and reduce the deficit, federal employees can help find savings and inefficiencies. And he reiterated his party’s position that deficit reduction must come from a combination of budget cuts and revenue increases, through increased taxes for the wealthy.
He also said he is “agnostic” on outsourcing some federal jobs to the private sector, although he said inherently governmental jobs should always be done by federal employees.
And Kaine feels the Defense Department needs to do more to operate more efficiently and restructure its bases. He said the Pentagon still has many European bases that reflect a 1950s force structure that today is far out of date.
10 Comments
As long as the public perceives the defense dept is still paying $115 for hammers and $600 for toliet seats, there will be a problem
Thank you for your support!!! Most of us have served our country with Valor & honor & continue to work & support our country. We need high level people such as yourself to speak furthur as to the sacifices we make eveyday for our country…
While I appreciate the support, it is a shame that many of our leaders (mostly Republican) fail to hear the message and continue to treat us as second-class citizens. We support the US by our work; we are tax-payers too; we have bills to pay; the poor economy hurts us just as much…and yet we are treated as though we haven’t done enough.
I have worked for the federal government long enough to know this is cyclical and will come back around (hopefully) eventually.
Every federal worker within his state better be voting for this guy. One of the few voices out there who will at least look at the federal workforce as necessary and not “overhead”. There is little difference between Republicans and Democrats in todays government. Just have to do some investigating and vote for whom you think will do the best job for you.
Could Mr. Kaine be pandering or is it that he doesn’t want anyone looking at how he violated every possible conflict-of-interest ethical standard when he was both head of the DNC and governor of the State of Virginia during the last year of his term. Mr. Kaine owes the people of Virginia back a year of salary as well as payment for housing and transportation during that final year of his term when he did only DNC business and totally neglected the people of Virginia. I originally voted for Kaine for governor – will never listen to anything he has to say until he acts ethically and returns his final year of salary. Most blatantly unethical conflict-of-interest politician I’ve ever seen.
This guy will say anything to get elected to the senate for life then one will never see him again until it’s time for him to be relected then the cycle starts over again the major reason we have a ton of worthless congressmen and senators hanging around Washington becoming multimillionaires and billionaires.
@Jenyfer–it’s not just Republicans (or even mostly Republicans). Don’t forget that it is your Demo President Obama that has not voted us a pay increase since he has taken office. Look at the results. The Demos have done more harm to federal employee pay than anything the Demo party likes to blame Bush for. If you feel guilty about the 3.x% pay raises Bush gave us, you can gladly give those back to the treasury.
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Kaine is correct, politicians use federal workers as scapegoats for their own destructive policies.
In their zeal for protecting the very wealthy, mostly republicans will do anything, including destroying the middle class.
Kaine, has said nothing, I was a federal employee for many years, for sure federal employees are great part of American workforce. However the government should not be increasing the amount of federal employees. Private sector can handle many jobs that are now being created and or taken over by federal agencies, that is the issue not weather the federal workforce is valid or not. Much of words for votes.