President Barack Obama's decision to freeze the pay of federal workers is a good first step toward aligning the pay of government employees with their private sector counterparts as a means of cutting the budget deficit.

The move is expected to save $28 billion over the next five years, money that should be devoted entirely to deficit reduction.

Before the freeze can take affect on Jan. 1, it must be approved by Congress. That's likely to be a tough sell in the lame duck session. Labor unions are already condemning the proposal as overly harsh on working families, and can be expected to lobby to block it.

However, after Jan. 1, prospects improve greatly with Republican control of the House.

Several GOP members of Congress have suggested an across-the-board federal pay cut of 10 percent. That's something that must be explored.

The pay freeze is expected to affect about 24,000 federal civilian workers in Michigan.

The pay of government employees has continued to climb over the past two or three years while private sector pay was not only frozen, but cut. In that sense, the federal government is two years behind most of the rest of the nation's employers.

A study by the Heritage Foundation concludes that the pay and benefits of federal workers is 30 percent to 40 percent higher than comparable employees in the private sector.

Obama's pay freeze order does not impact costly benefits, nor does it stop seniority raises. USA Today reports that federal employee pay has risen 37 percent after inflation over the past decade.

And for the most part, federal pay is not merit-based, meaning employees are rewarded regardless of the quality of their work.

Along with pay cuts, Obama must also consider cutting the non-military workforce, which has grown by 17 percent since 2007.

Heritage estimates that aligning federal pay and benefits more closely to the private sector and adopting a pay-for-performance system could save $48 billion a year.

The pay freeze is a good start and a laudable move by the president.

Congress should approve it, and then get to work on wringing more savings out of a bloated federal payroll.

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