I’m with you. I have no idea what these folks are talking about. I guess I understand the anger, but most of the posters have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Federal pay in some jobs may be better than civilian pay, but in other jobs it’s less. The retirement is not what most people think. TSP is essentially a 401K type, employee funded retirement program with a % of employer matching contributions. The biggest benefit of government work, in my opinion, is job security—not pay and other forms of compensation.
As I posted on other threads, we WANT quality people in government jobs. The problem is not that quality people are being overpaid so much that we ask government to do too many things. It takes a lot of people to run a bureaucracy as big as the federal government. Eliminate programs and return federal employees to the civilian sector. Keep those in constitutionally enumerated jobs and pay them what they deserve.
Across-the-board cuts are asinine. That’s the easy way...instead of actually having to make choices, just punish everyone regardless of what they do, the amount of expertise they bring, and the quality of their work. Across-the-board pay cuts don’t actually eliminate anything other than further encouraging the best employees to leave government service!
And go where? Private sector? Where your chance of a pension is nill, where your 401K may or may not be matched on any given quarter, where layoffs are rife and salary freezes or cuts are the norm? All I can say to that is more power to you and welcome to the real world.