Posted on 11/20/2012 11:25:03 PM PST by Abiotic
The Federal-Postal Coalition -- a group representing more than two dozen federal employee unions -- pleaded with Congress on Monday to spare their members in any deal related to the "fiscal cliff."
Federal workers, the coalition wrote in a letter, have contributed more than their fair share toward reducing the debt and are the only group that has been targeted so heavily.
“Federal and postal employees and their families are hardworking, middle-class Americans who are struggling during these tough times just like other Americans,” the group wrote. “No other group has been asked to financially contribute the way they have, and it is time our nation’s leaders found other ways to reduce the deficit than continually taking from those who have dedicated their lives to public service.”
According to the coalition, federal employees have funded $60 billion in budget savings in 2011 and 2012 as a result of their ongoing pay freeze and an additional $28 billion in savings will be derived from the freeze extension through March 2013.
Federal workers also contributed $15 billion toward the budget in 2011 when the contribution rate toward retirement pensions was raised to 2.3 percent for new employees.
Top Democratic lawmakers on committees related to the federal workforce told Government Executive last week that they would like to leave federal-employee benefits out of any potential debt deal. After President Obama’s reelection, top federal unions said they were confident their members would not be targeted in such a deal and a pay raise would be instituted.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
Yep, i guess that was my point all along, that happens alot on FR, it's always kinda bugged me and I've never mentioned my career status before today. As for me I am in the DoD supporting the navy Warfighter and trust me the American taxpayer is getting their $$ worth. As for my bennies, I have blue cross federal, your right i dont know exactly but i cant imagine my ins. is that much better than anyone elses. As far as leave, we do get compensated pretty well but when I retire I cannot sell back much of it. As I said I am on a 3rd year pay freeze no COLA, no bonus of any kind, I'm not complaining but if anybody thinks I'm spending three weeks a year in the Caribbean their wrong, i dont work in the GSA.lol. As for being a good person, I hope so, I am as Conservative a person as I know how to be if that means anything and I hope it does.
Hmmmm....I wonder why some of the wealthiest countries in the USA are surrounding WDC?
Depends.
Most don’t, beyond SS and sales tax. But I do know a few who are on EBT that are farmers and pay quite a bit in land taxes.
They are scamming the system, and I don’t have a lot of respect for them.
That is fairly close to what I make as an engineer (in the Midwest, so I suspect my cost of living is cheaper than yours).
We haven’t had a pay freeze in a while, but I have taken pay cuts in the past. It is part of the game, and not a fun part either.
But I am fairly confident the benefits you have are a lot better than mine. I suspect you have a pension, and I have never had that option (my wife does also, but we are planning on Illinois to go bankrupt long before she sees a dime). And the health care for government workers is usually better, though that depends.
My point is that when the hard times hit, all need to be on the chopping block. I have been through it in two companies, and it is never easy. Once I left right before the ax fell on my position (thanks to a good manager who told me what was happening six months in advance).
Thank you for making the effort.
Out of all the federal workers I know personally (including my husband), only one is a loon as far as politics goes. The loon amongst them always votes for the weirdest third-party candidate there is and won’t vote for dems.
The rest of them vote for the closest thing to conservatives they can find — every election — and they refuse to join the union. The unions have lost many members over the last decade or so, and their crime bosses are desperately in search of other businesses to target, since they can no longer depend on federal employees to be loyal to them.
That’s easy to say now that the feds have almost destroyed the private sector and pay their special worker bees with money stolen from others.
Who knew they would flood the country with 40 million government dependents and make a lifestyle out of handouts?
I voted for smaller gov all my life and was niave enough at one point to believe it. I even believed that takers would never outnumber the makers without a collapse. But you make a good point, we were all dummies for not getting on the freebie bandwagon a long time ago.
'Federal Workers to Congress: Leave Us Out of Deficit Deal''Federal workers' is an oxymoron. 99.986524% of them aren't worth a crap. I saw that in person when I was on site for 18 months in a Gubmint bldg we were doing HVAC mechanical upgrades on (back during Klintoon's years and *his* gubmint shutdown).
The remaining .013476% of Fed workers are those like our Mail Man who not only is a "worker" but cares about the job he does. He'll actually get out of his truck and deliver to our door anything that's large and could possibly get damaged, ruined, or bent, if he put it in our mailbox as his 'job description' requires.
We also try to tip him at Christmas if we have an extra $20 laying around. But under Barry that's getting harder to do.
As far as being on the chopping block, the fed gov does need downsizing, but with what we have in the Whitehouse I don't see that happening any time soon. I am proud and privileged to work for the American taxpayer supporting the US navy warfighter, there are many areas of fed gov that need cutting but (this may sound a little selfish) not where I work. What we do where I work is directly related to the freedom of this country, at least whatever the Whitehouse will allow.
V_TWIN
Many of us here served a career in the military. We know the DOD. We know who does what, where and how well. We also know GS scales.
We spent an entire career serving this great nation while at the same time fighting career bureaucrats (GS) as they went about their business of finding reasons they can't do something.
The worst GS examples of this approach are found in DC, to be sure.
At any rate, bottom line, saying you are in the DOD and can't talk about what you do is not really accurate. Every DOD organization and job, with very rare and limited exceptions, even those in the “black” part of the budget, has an unclassified description—how about yours?
Cross the board 10%, every dept., every agency.
Afraid I just lost any sympathy for you, after taking a look at BC Federal plan benefits. You have better and cheaper health insurance than I’ve ever had. Furthermore, I’ll be you get a pension, which is pretty much unheard of in the private sector. As for going without raises, join the club! Many of us running businesses have had to take pay cuts or go without pay.
We need to have some people do the things in the Fedgov that need doing. The danger is that everyone thinks that their little area is the most important (and from what you alluded to, yours is).
But at some point the costs get to great. We are starting to field mercenaries. That is not a good sign for the fiscal health of the state.
Regards, V_TWIN
You say that likes it's a bad thing.
Maybe this will get some sympathy back, I do not have a pension unless you consider a TSP (goverment 401K) a pension. Fed gov used to do pensions but that has been a thing of the past for quite some time. I put $ in, the fed gov does match a certain amount of that but don’t most 401ks do that? (and yes I understand where the matching comes from.)
As far as ins. goes I’ll take your word for that, Ive never done a comparison. Like I said, maybe pay freezes for us are the correct thing, I’m not complaining. Considering the current economic climate in the US, I know anyone who is gainfully employed nowadays is fortunate.
I’m not being snarky (much), I really am trying to recall a story from last year about federal employees owing a very large amount of unpaid taxes. That’s what struck me as amusing about the way the article was written, I have an appreciation for irony.
Most of the government workers that cause so many problems are in the various Washington-connected agencies and they give us all a bad name. Most of my co-workers spent 20 or more years of honorable military service and it was a a natural move to go back to the same base they retired from to fill a civilian slot - they get to leverage their military experience when it comes to training new recruits and over the last 4 years, it was either fill a civilian vacancy or go on unemployment - not much choice there. I spent 24 years in the AF and my 13 years as a DOD civilian makes 37 years in/around the military and the folks I love so much.
Not all the civilians are like my co-worker; he can't convince me so he goes to other. I overheard him asking a young civilian what he thought it meant that Obama got so much of the vote - the young man looked at him and said, "Because so many people are stupid?" It was a good moment to see the look on his face.
I understand - those you talk about do exist and they are generally administration-connected bureaucrats vs. mush of the civilian workforce that supplements the various bases. Most of the folks like me have spent 20 or more years in uniform and many of us are in the training area teaching new recruits their basic career field courses. We are mainly patriots who love the country and the military and the job is looked at much like any private-sector person looks at his job. Working around the military and the military in uniform we came to love is a lagniappe. We also understand that even though our pay comes from tax dollars, we pay taxes the same as everyone else and we hate to see them wasted. I understand and agree that we shouldn’t be getting special favors and I understand and accept that even my pay is on the table in these times. Like anyone else, we have lost much spending power (although we are grateful for our jobs) during the Obama melt-down and like anyone else, we are human and selfish enough to hope for raises vs. cuts, but many of us are willing to share in the pain if the idiots in the Congress will actually stop flushing America’s future down the toilet. God Bless
Fine, then they can have a substantial layoff instead.
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