The more things change…

Just a few months back, members of the federal family — active and retired —were sweating the return of Congress, an Oct. 1 government shutdown and the end of the retirement system as they know it.

Congress has the FERS retirement program in its sights. The idea was to eliminate cost-of-living adjustments for FERS retirees (past, present and future); force current employees to pay more for their benefits (meaning, in effect, a 6 percent drop in take-home pay) and eliminate the gap payment early FERS retirees get until they qualify for Social Security at age 62. That would have been a major hit to the thousands of air traffic controllers, law enforcement officers, firefighters and others who are required to retire at 57.

Losing the gap payment could have forced thousands to get after-retirement jobs to put food on the table.

Losing the COLA inflation-catchups would, over a long retirement, drastically reduce the amount of money the former feds (or their survivors) had to live on.

Even the ‘modest’ proposal to put CSRS retirees on diet-COLAs (each January increase would be 0.5 percent LESS than the actual rise in living costs) over time would have eaten into their annuities, reducing their spending power. Especially if there is a return to high inflation. Some people retired before what they thought would have been an Oct. 1 effective date. Others planned to leave this year (earlier than they wished) to maybe beat some or all of the proposed changes.

Then boom, they are all gone.

The Oct. 1 shutdown vanished as Congress kicked the legislative can down the road to just before Christmas. The very scary, very real plans to whack the CSRS and FERS retirement programs are gone with the wind. For now.

The threat du jour now is a possible Dec. 22 partial government shutdown. Democrats and Republicans are trying to figure out how it would benefit them (as in, the other political party getting blamed). Since that’s only four days away, we should know how happy (or not) Christmas will be. Whether feds will get paid on time (if at all) or get coal in their stockings.

Other than that, it’s been, surprisingly, a good year on the job front, primarily because of what didn’t happen.

Now comes Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who warns that President Donald Trump’s new budget could call for a zero pay raise in January 2019.

No word from the Trump administration, but anything is possible. Feds didn’t get their January raises in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

Keep calm and carry on!

Nearly Useless Factoid

By David Thornton

Source: Wikipedia

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