This is a constant right-wing myth.
Nonsense on your part.
Politicians DO have an interest in minimizing costs, in lower wages.
Only to the extent that it suits their political agenda and favors the fickle nature of the electorate. The electorate can have their opinion changed the moment a rival political opponent trouts out the poor **insert stereotype here** children, elderly, etc to paint a rival candidate in a negative light and thus effectively oppose any cuts and cost cutting measures by the force of public opinion.
Furthermore a rival candidate could also point to said rival's support of other government entities and thus negate the argument for cuts by painting the rival as hypocritical, e.g. GOP on medicare, military spending and Dems on social welfare spending, Obama-care, overly redundant environmental agencies, etc and thus stifle any conversation on economic necessity of large cost cutting measures and/or roll back of government growth.
I hate to tell you, but a hell of a lot of management in private companies are out to spend more on wages for their employess - which helps them a lot, from increasing morale and loyalty to recuirting the better people away from the competition - and screw the shareholders, and there's a lot of 'conflict of interest' between management and shareholders. Tell me how often shareholders actually replace boards who actually replace senior management who actually replace lower management over these conflicts? Never.
This opinion totally ignores reality that the money spent on wages and benefits by a private entity is always measured against potential prospect of risk vs rewards. Private firms which ignore the reality of costs and the outcomes of risk vs reward will eventually face a situation in which they are no longer in business due to reckless long term behavior. Over compensation is always felt by private firms via lack of efficiency on how and where they spend their money and thus very few firms would spend money on employees who are not worth their weight in the profit they generate their firm.
Government entities however do not actually face these concerns because they have at their disposal the ability to lobbying for increased spending, deficit spending, a rise in taxes, etc and can operate for many years effectively on what many private firms would consider a net loss on the goods and services they provide, e.g US Postal service, Amtrack, etc.
And the same situation exists with politicians and their bosses, the voters. Voters like to pay lower taxes, and politicians benefit in their elections by lower taxes. There might be a lot MORE pressure on the politicians over this than there is over private management - but the politicians at least face a lot.
Politicians face the pressure to appease their voter base however I stated before (and as you are making the case here for me) public unions almost always are at odds with such pressures because their goal is to seek the greatest compensation for their members. In addition a politician who parleys his support of public unions via votes can very easily overcome any negative backlash so long as the pendulum of support is weighted with enough votes to swing in his/her direction via any means of political appeals they may employ when stating their case and rallying the public sector unions to oppose any and all cost cutting measures.
Now, on top of that 'legitimate' pressure - every dollar spent on excessive worker wages in government is also a dollar the politicians can't spend on a pet political project.
Only to the extent that electorate is watching and that they are prevented from raising taxes, deficits spending, etc but that requires again an electorate that is large enough in numbers to suppress the any support in terms of votes public union employees are able to garner for their own shared cause.
And politicians LOVE to have more money for their pet politician projects - creating a second pressure against excessive government wages.
In fact, it seems to me that the politicians are much more often the 'enemy of the workers' they are setting the pay for than the private sector.
It is interesting how you state one position here and then backpedal to state the reverse to support your reasoning.
A politician who supports "pet projects" are politicians who enjoy spending tax payer dollars at the expense of the tax payer. In addition these "pet projects" do not exist in a vacuum and are in fact often tied to government by the necessity to pass regulations, mandates, decrees, etc all of which increase the bureaucracy and help to sustain the power base and influence of public unions and their members who only grow in legion with the added increase and size of government spending.
If the politicians freeze or lower worker wages in some way, there's a great headline for them to campaign on, that voters LOVE them for. They're over-incented to cut, really.
Again this point is totally depending on specific situations where the electorate overwhelming supports the cuts. However often any mention of spending cuts or cost cutting measures almost certainly come at odds with public unions who wield a great amount of influence the political process so that they can change the winds of political opinion. (e.g. CA's governor race, Meg Whitman vs Jerry Brown along with how public unions distracted and smeared her during the election cycle.)
And in fact, IN GENERAL - with too many exceptions, just as in private - government union wages aren't 'outrageous' by any means - they're often kind of badly paid.
There are many examples within government (CA for example) where wages and benefits have far outstripped the private sector.
So this is a myth Republicans run on for one reason only - to exploit the issue - and who cares if it breaks government, that only hurts the people - to get votes for corrupt policy.
Save234
And one could also point out how your blind partisanship has muddled your mind and prevented you from actually having any sort of unbiased and detached view on the matter at hand.