A small (but spendable) silver lining

Long-time federal news junkies have developed tough hides. They had no choice. For decades, under both openly anti-bureaucrat and allegedly”friendly” politicians, the pay, pensions and benefits of career feds have been the preferred (deflated) political football.Almost all of the good news in mid-2015 is that most of the pending bad news hasn’t panned out. Yet. It’s still pending. It was, is and will be very real until Congress adjourns. And it will come back next year. And the year after that. But for the most part feds have been untouched.

With Congress about to leave on yet another extended vacation, feds may make it into the new fiscal year intact.

The Obama administration gave feds two of the last three pay freezes. Then it invented, launched, then recoiled in horror as sequestration — the unthinkable poison pill — became a reality. And it initially proposed a plan that would trim future cost of living adjustments for federal, military and Social Security retirees.

Republicans, mostly in the House, have tried to make being at work nightmarish for civil servants. They’ve sought to punish — by reducing budgets — career Internal Revenue Service employees and their all-important mission for the antics of a few partisan officials, most of whom are no longer in service.  Now that the IRS is struggling to provide normal services, handle new duties and, by the by, collect taxes some members are proposing that private debt collectors do the job — for a cut of the take. Although that has been tried — crashing and burning twice in recent years — the short-attention span coalition in Congress wants to reinvent that particular wheel.

There have been half-massed attempts to tamper with the Thrift Savings Plan’s golden goose — the G-fund. The proposal, part of compromise over national transportation funding, would cut its annual rate of return from 2.25 percent to 0.02 percent

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of many GOP presidential candidates, wants to shake up the Department of Veterans Affairs by putting workers on a much shorter leash. The plan, which would create something like an at-will workforce, would make it much easier for top VA officials to fire poor performers, or folks like the handful who cooked the books on health care for vets.

Oh, the good news. President Barack Obama proposed a 1.3 percent January 2016 pay raise for white-collar civil servants.  That’s not much, but better than the three-year period when they got nothing. The good news is that Congress isn’t making any moves to quash the raise, meaning it’s likely to happen. Don’t spend it yet, but things are looking relatively good.

So what’s happening and what’s next? Today at 10 a.m. on our Your Turn radio show, we’ll be talking with Katie Maddocks and Greg Stanford of the Federal Managers Association. They’ll bring us up to date on what Congress is doing, how serious it is and what’s likely to happen soon, and during the 2016 election year. The show is 10 a.m. ET at www.federalnewsradio.com. In the D.C. area you can listen at 1500 AM.  If you have questions for Greg and Katie, or me, email me at: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com.

Nearly Useless Factoid

In the book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, the Witch of the North give Dorothy the Wicked Witch of the East’s silver shoes with pointed toes. The shoes were changed to ruby slippers in the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz”.