Corporate CEOs Become the Nation’s Richest “Government Employees” by Leaching Off Taxpayers

Budget hawks squawk about bloated bureaucracies and excessively paid public employees to justify their calls for slashing government services.

In recent years, their drumbeat about government waste has contributed to a political climate that has allowed for layoffs of hundreds of thousands of public employees and the imposition of salary freezes and paltry pay raises, as well as reductions of pension, health-care and other benefits.

But public employees like sewage treatment workers, teachers and social workers are far from being fat cats. Arguably, the most compensated “government” employees are actually the corporate bosses and administrators who line their pockets with taxpayer dollars for shoddy contracted-out work.

“Exposed: America’s Highest Paid Government Workers,” a report by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), shows how just six of those corporate chieftains have earned $100 million in recent years. But their track record for delivering services is often abysmal.