Chances good for passage of TSP/annual leave bill

Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says he thinks the bill will pass -- eventually.

Will you soon be able to invest your unused annual leave when you retire from federal service?

As we told you yesterday, there’s a bill in the House — HR 4865, the Federal Employees and Uniformed Services Retirement Equity Act of 2010.

There’s also a sticking point now. The Congressional Budget Office just released its cost estimate for the bill, and it looks like this proposal could carry a price tag of $317 million over 10 years.

Senior Correspondent Mike Causey explains where this number comes from.

“This legislation would let people — when they separate from government or when they retire — take any unused annual leave they have and, instead of getting paid for it, roll it into their Thrift Savings Plan account. It would be a boon to a lot of people. So, the revenue loss to the government is CBO’s estimate of how many people would take advantage of that. They would be taxed eventually, but they wouldn’t be taxed immediately.”

The CBO estimate is just that, though. An estimate.

“We have to score everything, and [the government sometimes] does some creative scoring. . . . The irony is, if it’s over 10 years, that’s about $30 million a year, that’s not particularly significant. It’s better to have it coming in than going out, but the irony is that President Obama is the one that suggested that the private sector do this, and so I suspect that somebody influential is going to say — ‘I’m leaving in the next couple of years, get this done’.”

Usually, this would be the part where we tell you all about the new Your Turn airing tomorrow at 10 a.m., but Mike’s going to be out of the office getting an award, so the show won’t be live. (Don’t call in.)

It is a good one, though — and you can read all about it here.

For more on your TSP:

Email the author of this post: dramienski@federalnewsradio.com

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