Fedweek

The House Budget Committee has approved a spending outline for the upcoming fiscal year that endorses a familiar set of proposed benefit cuts for federal employees and retirees, although the plan’s may not move much forward, if at all.

The budget “resolution” does not allot money to agencies and programs—appropriations bills do that—but rather is to act as guidance for those spending bills. Like a similar measure approved by the House last year, the measure would order cuts of $32 billion over 10 years in programs under the control of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The budget plan once again recommends achieving those savings through steps such as increasing employee contributions toward retirement and ending the FERS “special retirement supplement”—which fills in for Social Security benefits for those who retire before age 62 until they can start drawing those benefits—for future retirees. Those mirror proposals included in the Trump administration budget of earlier this year.

The Budget Committee plan is well behind schedule, however, and both the House and Senate already have begun moving the appropriations bills. Even a vote in the full House is not guaranteed, and if one happens that could well be the end of the line. The Senate has shown no signs of producing a counterpart, instead basing its appropriations bills on spending levels for fiscal 2019 in a budget measure passed in March.

Congress could yet take up the benefit-cutting proposals separately, but without a budget resolution there would be less force behind them, lowering their chances of enactment.