Setting the record straight....
I've worked for the Federal Government for a very long time. 24 years, in my estimation is a very long time. In that time, and for the most part, I think I've been a good employee. The last three years maybe not as much as before, but that's because, and only because, of the circumstance I've found myself in that have impacted how much time away from my job I've had to take.
I try to give a fair day's work for the wages I get paid. I don't just sit around and "sponge" off the taxpayers. I work. So do the majority of Federal Employees.
For two and a half years, now, we've seen our wages frozen. For longer than that, those of us blue-collar workers have seen our wages capped. For those of you that don't know, the Federal Wage Grade employees are paid by locality. The lead agency in the locality does a wage study of comparable trades in their area and what their FWS employees are paid is based on that wage study. I'd be making more than I am now, but for the last as long as I can remember, Congress has capped our pay raises so they can't exceed what the General Schedule folks make. GS, by and large, are white collar positions. WG employees are the blue collar trades and craftsmen, like carpenters, equipment operators, airplane mechanics, machinists, etc.. you get the picture.
Both Congress and the President want to overhaul our retirement system. The government currently has two systems: The Civil Service Retirement (CSR) and Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). CSR is the old system and is a far better retirement. FERS is the one I'm under. About 30 years ago, the geniuses in Congress decided that as a way to save Social Security, they'd figure out a way to matriculate Federal Employees into the system and came up with FERS.
Under the old system, Federal Employees didn't pay social security taxes. They paid into CSR 7% I read someplace yesterday. Depending on the number of years they worked, they received a larger portion of what they made for working in retirement than I ever will. CSR was a good retirement system. Oh, CSR people could not draw Social Security for the years they'd worked for the government because they never paid into the system.
On the other hand, FERS employees (think your intrepid reporter here) get this: 1% of the average of your high 3 years of salary for every year you worked for the government. Because of my age, I can retire at 56 years of age with over 30 years of service. That number is based on the year I was born. That minimum age for retirement changes, and the people who were born later than me see that number increase, but I don't know where it maxes out. I think it's sixty or so.
At 56, I will have worked for the government for 31 years. I will get 31% of what my high three years of salary were. Figure 31% of $65,000. That works out to be about $20,150. From that, I have to pay my $5,000 a year healthcare premium. That leaves me $15,000 which is just over $1,000 a month.
To that amount, from 56 to 62, I will get a special offset. The government will figure out what my social security benefit would be for the time I worked for them. Not my total social security benefit, but just the benefit for the time I worked for them I would receive from Social Security at age 62. If you draw your Social Security at age 62, you take a heck of a ding in benefits. So that will add some to my retirement. That offset stops the nanosecond I become eligible for Social Security.
I also have the option to participate in a 401K program called the Thrift Savings Plan. That's where I contribute my own money. They match 5% dollar for dollar, but it's an odd formula they use to figure that out.
For my FERS annuity, I pay an extra .8% of my salary. New Federal Employees will pay much more than that for that benefit. OK, I think it's fair to say here's the deal when you're being hired. You know what the terms of employment are and you accept them. Cool.
Congress though, thinks we're getting too good a deal and we need to pay more for our retirement. 5% more to be exact. So much for matching funds.
I say this to make a point which often gets lost in the conversation about unions and retirement benefits etc... the benefits we receive at retirement are part of our compensation. To get them at some point, we traded off something. Usually, wages. A lot of people forget that folks decided to accept less of a cost of living raise or less wages to offset what they wanted for retirement benefits.
In the case of Federal Employees, the retirement system we had was great. What we have now isn't great, but it beats nothing. But if you take 5% of my pay away from me to pay for it, that's 5% of my salary I used to spend in our economy that's 70% consumer spending. You're hurting me a little, but you're hurting local businessmen a lot because Hill AFB is a large employer and that's money the collective we aren't pumping into sandwich shops, retailers, car dealerships, etc...
Which brings me to another point: Furloughs and sequester and how it affects y'all. There is noise about us having to take a day off a week starting in April because of the sequester. That works out to a 20% pay cut for the folks at Hill AFB and my other DoD co-workers for six months. That pay cut will have a drastic effect on the local businesses in the area for longer than six months, though. Here's why:
If folks have savings, they'll use it to get by on. Others will cut back to the bare bones and try to scrape by. That means, no spending money on things like dining out, etc... And when things get back to normal, this little escapade will drive home the point to those that don't have one that you need a rainy day fund. Those that have them will replenish them and that will not happen overnight. That's going to take time, so this sequester thingie is gonna have lasting pains, and not just on the Hill AFB workers.
And that's sad because it's just politics. And it doesn't have to happen.
My closing thoughts are these: Federal employees aren't the bad guy. What got us here was greed coupled with this ridiculous notion that trickle down economics was a good idea. Nobody in their right mind would believe this is good economic policy on the face value of it alone. It's a bill of goods people have been sold by snake oil salesmen looking out for their own interests, but hiding all of this stuff under the banner of social issues.
We've blamed the poor because they're poor and need programs that take tax dollars, but we don't blame the employers who pay low wages and little to no benefits (think Wal-Mart for starters...they're not the only one, just the biggest one!). We don't like having something taken from us and given to others, but it seems to be OK when we take work from others, and people become rich(er) from that scheme.(corporate profits, banks, etc...) because someone willingly took that job. Now we're blaming the Federal Employees. Government is too big. Government employees make too much money.
OK, stop and think about what part of this big government we can live without. Quit subsidizing dairy farmers and milk is $8 a gallon tomorrow. Can we fix the tax code and eliminate some things we ought not to be doing in the first place? Wc can, but that's not the problem. It's spending. On things like regulation, which exists because someplace, at some point in our history, someone did something so outrageously bad their entire industry needed to be regulated.
There's a reason we have the EPA, people. Crack a history book.
The dept. of Education is an easy target. Go to their website and look at what they do. Can we really do without that?
What I'm saying is yes, there's waste we can cut in government. But it seems that when part of that waste is closing tax loopholes we don't really need anymore, all of a sudden, that waste isn't waste. It's killing job growth...
The thing that's killing job growth, causing our deficits, and causing the biggest amount of grief for us is healthcare. Bottom line, that's the biggest driver of all of this. It's the 800 pound elephant in the room.
Buy a copy of Time magazine this week. I understand that in it, there is a 36 page article, the longest article on a single subject written by a single author in the history of the magazine I understand. it's all about why healthcare is so expensive.
Let's fix what's really broke!
I try to give a fair day's work for the wages I get paid. I don't just sit around and "sponge" off the taxpayers. I work. So do the majority of Federal Employees.
For two and a half years, now, we've seen our wages frozen. For longer than that, those of us blue-collar workers have seen our wages capped. For those of you that don't know, the Federal Wage Grade employees are paid by locality. The lead agency in the locality does a wage study of comparable trades in their area and what their FWS employees are paid is based on that wage study. I'd be making more than I am now, but for the last as long as I can remember, Congress has capped our pay raises so they can't exceed what the General Schedule folks make. GS, by and large, are white collar positions. WG employees are the blue collar trades and craftsmen, like carpenters, equipment operators, airplane mechanics, machinists, etc.. you get the picture.
Both Congress and the President want to overhaul our retirement system. The government currently has two systems: The Civil Service Retirement (CSR) and Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). CSR is the old system and is a far better retirement. FERS is the one I'm under. About 30 years ago, the geniuses in Congress decided that as a way to save Social Security, they'd figure out a way to matriculate Federal Employees into the system and came up with FERS.
Under the old system, Federal Employees didn't pay social security taxes. They paid into CSR 7% I read someplace yesterday. Depending on the number of years they worked, they received a larger portion of what they made for working in retirement than I ever will. CSR was a good retirement system. Oh, CSR people could not draw Social Security for the years they'd worked for the government because they never paid into the system.
On the other hand, FERS employees (think your intrepid reporter here) get this: 1% of the average of your high 3 years of salary for every year you worked for the government. Because of my age, I can retire at 56 years of age with over 30 years of service. That number is based on the year I was born. That minimum age for retirement changes, and the people who were born later than me see that number increase, but I don't know where it maxes out. I think it's sixty or so.
At 56, I will have worked for the government for 31 years. I will get 31% of what my high three years of salary were. Figure 31% of $65,000. That works out to be about $20,150. From that, I have to pay my $5,000 a year healthcare premium. That leaves me $15,000 which is just over $1,000 a month.
To that amount, from 56 to 62, I will get a special offset. The government will figure out what my social security benefit would be for the time I worked for them. Not my total social security benefit, but just the benefit for the time I worked for them I would receive from Social Security at age 62. If you draw your Social Security at age 62, you take a heck of a ding in benefits. So that will add some to my retirement. That offset stops the nanosecond I become eligible for Social Security.
I also have the option to participate in a 401K program called the Thrift Savings Plan. That's where I contribute my own money. They match 5% dollar for dollar, but it's an odd formula they use to figure that out.
For my FERS annuity, I pay an extra .8% of my salary. New Federal Employees will pay much more than that for that benefit. OK, I think it's fair to say here's the deal when you're being hired. You know what the terms of employment are and you accept them. Cool.
Congress though, thinks we're getting too good a deal and we need to pay more for our retirement. 5% more to be exact. So much for matching funds.
I say this to make a point which often gets lost in the conversation about unions and retirement benefits etc... the benefits we receive at retirement are part of our compensation. To get them at some point, we traded off something. Usually, wages. A lot of people forget that folks decided to accept less of a cost of living raise or less wages to offset what they wanted for retirement benefits.
In the case of Federal Employees, the retirement system we had was great. What we have now isn't great, but it beats nothing. But if you take 5% of my pay away from me to pay for it, that's 5% of my salary I used to spend in our economy that's 70% consumer spending. You're hurting me a little, but you're hurting local businessmen a lot because Hill AFB is a large employer and that's money the collective we aren't pumping into sandwich shops, retailers, car dealerships, etc...
Which brings me to another point: Furloughs and sequester and how it affects y'all. There is noise about us having to take a day off a week starting in April because of the sequester. That works out to a 20% pay cut for the folks at Hill AFB and my other DoD co-workers for six months. That pay cut will have a drastic effect on the local businesses in the area for longer than six months, though. Here's why:
If folks have savings, they'll use it to get by on. Others will cut back to the bare bones and try to scrape by. That means, no spending money on things like dining out, etc... And when things get back to normal, this little escapade will drive home the point to those that don't have one that you need a rainy day fund. Those that have them will replenish them and that will not happen overnight. That's going to take time, so this sequester thingie is gonna have lasting pains, and not just on the Hill AFB workers.
And that's sad because it's just politics. And it doesn't have to happen.
My closing thoughts are these: Federal employees aren't the bad guy. What got us here was greed coupled with this ridiculous notion that trickle down economics was a good idea. Nobody in their right mind would believe this is good economic policy on the face value of it alone. It's a bill of goods people have been sold by snake oil salesmen looking out for their own interests, but hiding all of this stuff under the banner of social issues.
We've blamed the poor because they're poor and need programs that take tax dollars, but we don't blame the employers who pay low wages and little to no benefits (think Wal-Mart for starters...they're not the only one, just the biggest one!). We don't like having something taken from us and given to others, but it seems to be OK when we take work from others, and people become rich(er) from that scheme.(corporate profits, banks, etc...) because someone willingly took that job. Now we're blaming the Federal Employees. Government is too big. Government employees make too much money.
OK, stop and think about what part of this big government we can live without. Quit subsidizing dairy farmers and milk is $8 a gallon tomorrow. Can we fix the tax code and eliminate some things we ought not to be doing in the first place? Wc can, but that's not the problem. It's spending. On things like regulation, which exists because someplace, at some point in our history, someone did something so outrageously bad their entire industry needed to be regulated.
There's a reason we have the EPA, people. Crack a history book.
The dept. of Education is an easy target. Go to their website and look at what they do. Can we really do without that?
What I'm saying is yes, there's waste we can cut in government. But it seems that when part of that waste is closing tax loopholes we don't really need anymore, all of a sudden, that waste isn't waste. It's killing job growth...
The thing that's killing job growth, causing our deficits, and causing the biggest amount of grief for us is healthcare. Bottom line, that's the biggest driver of all of this. It's the 800 pound elephant in the room.
Buy a copy of Time magazine this week. I understand that in it, there is a 36 page article, the longest article on a single subject written by a single author in the history of the magazine I understand. it's all about why healthcare is so expensive.
Let's fix what's really broke!
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