Fedweek

The House Budget Committee hopes to approve this week a spending outline that would advocate several changes in benefits for federal employee and retirees. The committee has released few details but the plan reportedly assumes making benefits changes the House has backed in many prior years. These include increasing required contributions toward FERS and CSRS benefits for all employees; limiting the government’s share of FEHB premiums to general inflation, which typically would mean shifting more of the annual increases onto enrollees; reducing the government’s share toward FEHB premiums for retirees who put in relatively short careers (with other specifics to be determined); reducing the G fund rate of return; and reducing employment outside the defense and national security areas by 10 percent over several years through a partial hiring freeze. Meanwhile, the measure apparently will not address a 2017 federal employee raise, which–if followed through the rest of the budget process–would once again leave the door open for President Obama to set a raise by default. Earlier he recommended 1.6 percent and presumably he would formally set that as the final figure in an order to be issued later this year.