1. The government needs to have the ability to lay off any workers/staff when necessary, close to retirement or not.
Disagree. If that is the case, then any company, whether public or private, can just wait until every older employee reaches 58 or 59 (or 63-64, depending on the retirement age, and can their employee, thus screwing them all out of their benefits. Why not, if they can all get away with it? Never have to pay out benefits packages, just can the employee. And believe me, there are enough rat bosses out there to do it. Hope you are already retired, so that you don’t look unemployment in the eye, leaving you with no money in your dotage.
Then we’ll disagree.