Posted on 07/21/2017 7:52:09 AM PDT by freedumb2003
House Republicans greeted current and future federal employees with two controversial body blows in recent days — one amounts to a pay cut and the other would allow new feds to be fired for “no cause at all.”
The House Budget Committee approved a spending plan that would save the government $163.5 billion over 10 years by taking that amount from federal employees.
(snip)
Republicans call their plan “Building a Better America.” But the Americans now working to build a better country through their federal jobs would be called on to sacrifice again, as they have repeatedly over the years.
(snip)
This represents no understanding that civil service protections are designed to protect not just staffers, but also the public from a government bureaucracy riven with political favoritism, as was the case under the spoils system. Even members of Congress eager to fire feds faster must know that this drastic proposal runs afoul of a basic and long-standing principle that says government staffers should be protected from willy-nilly punishment by political operatives.
(snip)
“Congress and the administration cannot balance the federal budget on the backs of our federal workers,” said one of the letter signers, Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), after the House plan was released Tuesday. “Many of our federal employees work at the CIA, Pentagon, FBI, law enforcement, homeland security and intelligence agencies. They and our federal workforce are dedicated hard-working professionals who work day and night to protect our homeland and national security, cure diseases, and provide services that help the American people.”
(snip)
“This is a plan that the entire House Republican Conference can support,” Black said after her committee advanced the legislation. “I look forward to passage on the House floor.”
Feds look forward with dread.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
wear == where. If I could spell I’d be dangerous!
If I could properly punctuate I’d rule the world!
and my wife says I’m humble too!
Sounds like a lot better than retirement options available to almost all private sector employees.
It might have seemed like a lot at the time but if you live long enough it will pay well.
I agree about SS probably not being there but your pension and other investment will be.
You should be celebrating not complaining. If you even work 20 years and have a 3 year average 60K that is 20K a year for life. Just out of the gate. If you maxed (as anyone should) the 401K then you should be set to retire pretty young.
and if they can't seem to pull up their big boy pants on that one, at least only allow pension at age 60 or 62.....
People have commented upon the dictatorial power which judges have over the executive branch.
The ONLY way to curb their power, is to give the president the power to fire ANY executive branch employee. That way the president can say “The judge has exceeded his authority. Anybody who chooses to follow the judge’s orders instead of mine, is fired.”
Just because people planned on it does not change the fact that it is welfare. People did not pay into it. People were taxed and the money was immediately spent. The fact that people went along with the all the lies proclaimed about the program does,not,change the program. It is a tax and spend welfare state entitlement designed to break people to the hand of the Democratic Party.
I’m not complaining at all. I’m correcting gross misrepresentations about the retirement plans from people who are repeating rumours they heard from god knows where.
If you retire early your health benefits are deducted from your pension. They aren’t “free”. At 65 you are on Medicare like everyone else. Health benifits are not for life. You also pay state and federal income tax on your annuity and on your social security benefits and on any money withdrawn from your 401k.
Because of early retirement and Obamacare my annuity is 600 dollars a month until I’m 65 years old and my health care is at least twice that and my deductible doubled.
Also there are very restrictive rules on collecting a pension. For example, your years of service must be consecutive and you loose 5 percent per year from your pension for every year you retire before the age of 65. The penalty age goes up for people born after 1960.
The earliest age you can retire is 56 for those born before 1960. There is no pension if you leave before your minimum age and minimum years. You can also lose 1% of your annuity contributions over your career under certain circumstances,
So if you retire at the earliest age possible after twenty years of service you will lose for life 45 percent of your pension.
I’m not complaining. It a good benefits package! Fortune 500 company’s use to have benefit plans like this but after almost 50 years of the great society those programs have died and they eventually, out of necessity, will die in the government to.
Anyone who has worked for the govt knows that in most agencies 50% of the lower level staff and 9p% of the management staff are worthless.
IF you want those restrictions-—You would have to match it with price freezes.
I am on Soc Sec. 4 times in 8 years, Obama gave us ZERO, I got a .3 (POINT 3) percent increase for this year—amounted to exactly $4. My telephone (landline only-—no Cell Phone !) went up $7 a month. My vehicle insurance went up-again- thanks to the illegal rivers in Nevada who have been given licenses. My last accident was Oct 1966 & my last ticket was somewhere around 1997-—no seat belt. My property taxes go up a limited 3% a year by state law, so that went up $17.52 from $676.11 last year. Whole year of property tax. Gas is still around $2.75 a gallon & I only drove 1960 miles in 2016. Everything is thought out twice..... Trips are always multiple stops—usually on Soc Sec payday.
So-—I got $48 from COLA increases-—
minus $17.62 for taxes—
minus bout $84 for the phone increases
minus about $8 a month for vehicle insurance or $96/year.
Thanks, Obama, I am in the hole $149.62....
Tell me again about no COLA for those of us on Soc Sec? Please use small words——I really did only go to a ONE ROOM SCHOOL...REALLY!!!
“Feds look forward with dread.”
Good.
L
Hate to burst your fresh retirement bubble-—but—
Obama didn’t give one penny to us for COLA for 4 of the 8 years he was in charge, and last year, we got .3 percent. That is $3 on a Thousand dollars. I got a whole $4 a month increase. With all the other vendor increases I got, I am in the hole for 2017 about $150. Lovely. I own my own home—all my vehicles & furniture & appliances, etc. I live rural & do NOT have a cell phone or Pay TV.
RUMOR has it we MIGHT get a 2.2% increase at the end of this year.
Meanwhile—welcome to the seniors!! Look up your local Senior center & find out what activities & meals they have available. Ours locally isn’t too bad, but we lost the best manager we ever had & the replacement is lost in trying to do everything she could do.
Well, sort of. I retired under an unusual arrangement with a lump sum and a small amount until a certain age so the details are a bit foggy.
But what we usually received was mostly a 401k type arrangment where we could assign money to a few different categories like T-Bills and such. One contributed and it grew. Hopefully. But you are right there was a small defined benefits plan also which I had forgotten about. In our cases it would probably amount to 20-25% of your high 3 so frankly wasn’t worth much. So you are partially correct.
The problem isn’t the pay or the benefits. It is the size of government and that government employement is used as a welfare program. Uncle sugar needs to be cut to 20% of its current size and continued employment should be based on performance.
Actually, I’d prefer just to see that you can’t collect on a pension until you hit retirement age (say 60 or so, rather than being able to at like 40) and I’d move up the age of SS from 67 to 70 over a period of like 12 years (3mo/yr push back)
Actually, you’d probably have around 3.5x vs what you’d get from SS. SS returns about 2.5% a year vs ~7-8% for the market at the median salary of around $40k/year. Assuming you work for 50 years, you’d have about 3.5x as much at 7.5% vs 2.5% with 12.4% of your come. It’s about 3x if you work for 40 years. If you have a high income, you’d probably get 7x instead of the 3.5x and if you had a low income you’d only barely come out ahead better. But your point is valid. It has drastically lowered the cost of capital for the feds by robbing the piggy bank over the last 50 years.
COLA is basically wealth distribution. Money is taken from someone else and transferred to you.
If you had invested the money you paid into SS you could basically get a set amount back, it would not have a COLA.
Hate to say this but it looks like the Government has got you thinking you are entitled to take from the next generations because the Government allows you to do that.
No taxpayer except fed employees themselves think this is a bad thing. Everyone knows these employees are grossly overpaid, unaccountable for bad performance, and unbelievably unproductive.
It will take a long time to catch up to the reverse scam...
Bonuses and automatic raises for decades; for NO CAUSE AT ALL.
Wow - that 1% or 1.1% multiplier is worse than the teacher retirement plan I’m in that uses 2% per year across the average of the high-5.
Actually they did.
And it is not 50% any more. It is 40%.
And only 17% ever get a pension. The rest get zip.
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