*This year, the post-Thanksgiving belt tightening isn’t just about too much pumpkin pie: President Obama is proposing a salary freeze for all civilian federal employees over the next two years (military personnel will not be affected).
Asserting that this was a difficult decision, Obama put the freeze into the context of a broader effort to trim government costs across the board, including freezing salaries for all senior White House officials last year, reducing improper government payments by $50 billion by the end of 2012, and putting forward over $1 trillion in deficit reduction into the 2011 budget.
