Posted on 05/23/2017 11:58:43 AM PDT by abb
The Trump administration’s 2018 budget to be released tomorrow will include a range of proposed spending cuts. The budget will call for cuts to food stamps, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs. These reforms come on top of proposed cuts to discretionary programs released in March.
There is more good news. The budget will propose cuts to the fat benefit packages received by federal workers. An April CBO report found that benefits for the government’s civilian workers were 47 percent higher, on average, than for comparable private-sector workers.
One cause of the excess is that federal workers receive both a defined-benefit and defined-contribution pension plan. Pensions and other benefits for the 2.1 million federal civilian workers cost taxpayers about $80 billion a year (excluding postal workers). So federal benefits are a good place in the budget to tap for savings.
The Washington Post reports that the Trump budget will propose these reforms:
Increasing the required worker contribution to defined-benefit (DB) pension plans. Basing DB benefits on the average of the top five salary years rather than the top three. Ending cost of living increases for DB payouts.
These would be reasonable and long-overdue changes. Indeed, a better reform would be to phase out DB benefits for federal workers altogether. After all, just 13 percent of private sector workers even have DB plans. Federal compensation packages should reflect typical packages in the rest of the nation.
The Washington Post said, “The thought of Trump’s assault on federal retirement programs becoming law enrages federal employee leaders.” It certainly does. The paper quotes union leaders calling the proposals an “outrageous attack,” “downright mean,” and “beyond insulting.”
On the contrary, trimming the 47 percent advantage in benefits enjoyed by federal workers is a sensible attack on overspending. Furthermore, it is mean and insulting to taxpayers to give gold-plated pensions to workers inside the government bubble, especially since those favored few also have much higher job security than the rest of us.
You are the exception to the norm. A talented and genuine public servant. Most bureaucrats are in it for the money because they had no faith in the free market [or in their talent].
There’ve got to be some missing labels on those.
Private sector average pay did not go up by 50% in 15 years. So what else goes into that? And why only 38k total compensation in 2000?
We all know that Federal Workers are much different than those lowly Private Sector Workers. The comparison isn’t even close.
They are just better People overall. They are smarter, more deserving and they work so much harder than those stinky Private Sector types.
Really, it’s true.
Is it all private sector jobs? Which if so is extremely weighted down by tons of minimum wage jobs. While I’m sure there are plenty of mail clerks in Government most jobs require a bigger skill set than your private sector minimum wage jobs.
Just think of the average person working in government, e.g., social security and they’re getting 47% more than average employee in the private sector.
There is definitely a kernel of truth here.
Over time the lower pay hands on jobs in maintenance and mail delivery, landscaping/mowing, operations of systems etc have been contracted out to give the appearance of reducing the government budget.
Thus those lower paid jobs are no longer in the government sector thereby in effect leaving only the higher paid functions to skew the average wage upward.
Help the taxpayers. Cut the federal EXECUTIVE service by 50% or even 60%.
Help the taxpayers. Cut the federal EXECUTIVE service by 50% or even 60%.
A commendable but ultimately Sisyphean effort.
LOL!
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