Republicans in the House Budget Committee will likely again raise proposals to require employees to pay more toward retirement benefits. Image: christianthiel.net/Shutterstock.com
Congress is on recess this week and next but when it returns, the recent period of relative quiet on key spending issues affecting federal employees and retirees likely will end soon afterward.
This year’s process of setting agency funding levels—which translate into employment levels, training and advancement opportunities, salary incentives and more for federal employees—has promised to be a contentious one since Republicans took control of the House in last fall’s elections.
An added difficulty is the need to raise the federal debt ceiling once the funding made available by some financial maneuvers already invoked—including one involving the TSP’s government securities G fund—is exhausted. Exactly when that might happen is uncertain but likely would be no later than late summer.
The Biden White House last month laid out its own set of proposals, including a proposed 5.2 percent average raise for January 2024 while leaving federal benefits untouched, boosting operating funds and staffing levels for many agencies, and calling for an increase in the debt limit with no strings attached.
Republican leaders in the House have insisted on making reductions in spending a condition for raising the debt limit. Few details have emerged apart from a stated desire to repeal several laws enacted in Biden’s first two years with both the House and Senate in Democratic control, and to cap agency spending at pre-pandemic levels. The administration and other Democrats in turn have focused on the potential disruption to government services that would result.
One potential, and even likely, focus for House Republicans in the House Budget Committee will be proposals they often have raised in the budget process including requiring most employees to pay more toward their retirement benefits, reducing the value of benefits for future retirees, shifting more of the cost of FEHB insurance from the government to enrollees, restricting retiree COLAs, and more.
As a fallback for a failure to act on the debt limit Republicans have proposed a bill (HR-167) that would prioritize spending of revenues as they come in, starting with paying interest on the national debt and programs including Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits and defense spending. Only after that would there be funding for other government operations including paying salaries of employees.
While the House GOP may soon call that bill or something like it to a vote, it would have virtually no chance of passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
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See also,
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The Best Ages for Federal Employees to Retire
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