Obama: 'I Don't Want to See Layoffs' of Feds

President Obama said in an interview aired on Thursday that his goal in imposing a two-year freeze on federal salary increases and trimming other agency spending was to avoid layoffs of "hard-working federal workers."

In the interview, with Milwaukee's TMJ4, Obama also provided a defense of government workers generally, criticizing an effort by Wisconsin's governor to cut health insurance and pension benefits for state employees, and restrict their rights to bargain collectively. Thousands of state workers stormed Wisconsin's capitol building this week to protest the moves.

Here's the relevant portion of the Obama interview:

If we want to avoid layoffs, which I want to avoid -- I don't want to see layoffs of hard-working federal workers. We have imposed, for example, a freeze on pay increases for federal workers for the next two years as part of my overall budget freeze. I think those kinds of adjustments are the right thing to do. On the other hand, some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like an assault on unions. And I think it's very important for us to understand that public employees, they're our neighbors, they're our friends. These are folks who are teachers, and they're firefighters, and they're social workers and they're police officers. They make a lot of sacrifices and make a big contribution, and I think it's important not to villify them or to suggest that somehow all of the budget problems are due to public employees.