House Oversight squabbles over health care
November 5th, 2009 | Congress Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
Will the House’s health care bill change your Federal Employees Health Benefits Program? It depends who you ask on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which oversees the FEHBP.
Sixteen committee Republicans sent a letter to Chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., on Nov. 4, calling on him to schedule immediate hearings to analyze the impact H.R. 3692 may have on the FEHBP. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Nov. 5 she has the votes to pass the health care bill on Nov. 7.
In the letter, Republicans said they need clarification on what the bill could do to participants in the FEHBP.
We believe the legislation in its current form may have a significant impact on FEHBP, including the possibility that FEHBP may not be deemed a ‘qualified health benefits plan’ for purposes of the bill, which will have the effect of either forcing federal employees out of their current coverage and into the ‘public option,’ or subjecting them to a tax for failure to obtain ‘acceptable health coverage.”
The Republicans are just trying to stall the health care bill with “baseless concerns,” Towns replied in a Nov. 4 news release.
Any suggestion that federal employees may be forced out of insurance coverage and subjected to an additional tax is false and has no basis in the text of the bill. Under H.R. 3962, federal employees will remain in their current system, and will also benefit from the same improvements to health insurance plans that all other Americans will enjoy, such as ending copayments for preventative medicine and automatic enrollment. Insurance providers participating in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) will be subject to the same rules and regulations covering all other health insurance plans.”
Rep. Lynch knows his video games
November 3rd, 2009 | Agencies Congress Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
In the video game world, your Web site is ‘Pong.’”
– Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., told Greg Long, executive director of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, at a Nov. 3 hearing in reference to the state of the TSP’s Web site, comparing it to one of the first arcade games.
The board is working to make its Web site more user friendly and improve the information available, Long told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s subcommitee on the federal workforce, postal service and the District of Columbia.
President signs end to NSPS
October 28th, 2009 | Agencies Congress Defense Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
President Barack Obama signed the Defense authorization bill into law Wednesday afternoon, marking the eventual end to the controversial National Security Personnel System.
HR 2647 phases out the NSPS pay-for-performance system by Jan 1, 2012, and the Pentagon has six months from Wednesday to start transferring employees over to their original pay system. For many employees, that means a return to the General Schedule.
The bill also contains a number of provisions long anticipated by federal employees:
- Federal Employment Retirement System (FERS) employees will be able to count unused sick leave toward their years of service, just as Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) employees can. This may end the epidemic of “FERS flu,” where soon-to-retire employees burn off sick leave because they couldn’t receive credit for it.
- FERS employees returning to work for the federal government would be able to redeposit their annuities.
- CSRS employees who work part time at the end of their careers would be able to have their annuities recalculated to be based only on their full-time salaries.
- Retirees returning to work for the federal government would be able to collect their full salaries while drawing their annuities. Agencies used to be able to pay rehired annuitants a full salary only if they obtained a waiver from the Office of Personnel Management.
- Federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. territories will now receive locality pay instead of cost of living. Employees in the continental U.S. receive locality pay.
Feel free to celebrate in the comments section below, feds!
Pass civil service reforms, Congress members urge
September 10th, 2009 | Congress Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
Members of the House’s Washington, D.C.-area delegation are urging lawmakers to keep a series of civil service reforms in the final version of the fiscal 2010 Defense Authorization bill.
The bill provides the long-desired FERS sick leave credit, which would allow sick leave to count as time served when calculating pensions.
The provisions in the bill are the same as those contained in a bill introduced by Rep. James Moran, D-Va.
“We’ve been working for a number of years to enact these common-sense federal employee reforms,” Moran said in a statement. “The House-passed Defense Authorization bill provides our best opportunity yet to bring needed incentives that will increase worker productivity and help recruit and retain the best and the brightest back to the federal civil service. I look forward to working with my colleagues to see that these provisions survive the House-Senate conference committee process.”
Members of the Washington delegation sent a letter to the chairmen and ranking members of the House Oversight and Government Reform and House Armed Services committees, saying the benefits are important to federal employees.
All of these provisions address key issues of fundamental fairness and efficiency for federal employees within the Department of Defense.”
Co-signers to the letter are: Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C.; Elijah Cummings, D-Md; C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md.; John Sarbanes, D-Md.; Donna Edwards, D-Md.; and Gerald Connolly, D-Va.
Other benefits included in the Defense Authorization bill are:
- Locality pay for federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. territories.
- CSRS employees would be allowed to work part-time at the end of their careers and collect full annuities.
- FERS employees who leave government and return would receive credit for their previous federal service and be allowed to redeposit their retirement annuities.
UPDATE: Senate approves Sunstein nomination
September 9th, 2009 | Agencies Congress OMB Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
The Senate voted 57-40 Thursday to approve the nomination of Cass Sunstein to be administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, ending a months-long debate over Sunstein’s writings as a professor and his ideological views.
At least two senators had placed holds on Sunstein’s nomination, due to concerns about his opinions on gun control and animal rights. Sunstein, a Harvard University professor, met with the senators, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and John Cornyn of Texas, and assured them he respected the Second Amendment and would not limit hunting or impose stricter gun control. The holds were then lifted.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., filed cloture on Sunstein’s nomination, limiting time for debate. His nomination was discussed Thursday in between tributes to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., praised Sunstein’s selection on the Senate floor before the Wednesday cloture vote. Lieberman chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which cleared Sunstein’s nomination months ago.
I’m convinced that Professor Sunstein has superior qualifications for this office and a strong commitment, if confirmed, to guide OIRA in conformity with the law and public interest above all.”
Tags: Cass Sunstein, OIRA, Senate
Obama again calls for 2.0 percent pay raise
August 31st, 2009 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Steve Losey
President Barack Obama today sent a letter to Congress reiterating his call for a 2.0 percent pay raise for federal employees in January.
Obama said that the ailing economy, increasing demands on the federal government and the ongoing terrorist threat are straining the federal budget. And since the federal government’s attrition continues to be relatively low, Obama said it will be tough to justify a larger pay raise.
The letter is something of a formality. In the unlikely event that Congress forgets to pass a federal pay raise, last year’s increase in the Employment Cost Index (which was 2.9 percent) would automatically become the average pay raise for federal employees unless the president sends Congress a letter setting an alternative pay raise.
But while it’s doubtful that Congress will cede its raise-setting power, Obama’s letter could give more strength to the House lawmakers who in July approved a 2.0 percent pay raise next year. The Senate, on the other hand, is pushing for a 2.9 percent raise.
National Treasury Employees Union National President Colleen Kelley, however, is not happy:
NSPS chief Bunn to be HR director at DLA
August 25th, 2009 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Steve Losey
The Pentagon said today that Brad Bunn, the program executive officer for the beleaguered National Security Personnel System, will be moving to the Defense Logistics Agency to be its human resources director.
The move was announced hours after the Defense Business Board issued a final report recommending the Pentagon “reconstruct” NSPS. Bunn’s move means that new blood will oversee the effort to break the mammoth, highly controversial pay-for-performance system down to its core elements and build it up again.
'Frustrated' unions say failure to kill NSPS 'illogical,' 'baffling'
August 25th, 2009 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Steve Losey
The American Federation of Government Employees wasted no time in firing back at the Defense Business Board task group’s final report on the National Security Personnel System, and its recommendation to rebuild — but not abolish — the controversial system. In a letter sent to the task group less than an hour after the report was posted online, AFGE President John Gage said the decision to drastically reform NSPS left the union “perplexed, angered and frustrated:”
The recommendation to keep NSPS is illogical and does not flow from your findings. The task group has miscalculated the intensity of hatred toward this system. [...] We wonder why DoD isn’t holding those responsible for NSPS accountable and terminating them for this colossal failure. Instead, the task group asks them to try again, while the employees continue to suffer and many good employees lose money. [...]
The evidence of complete failure and serious injustice to many loyal, hard-working DoD employees is overwhelming. It leads to no other conclusion that termination.
Tags: AFGE, National Security Personnel System, NFFE, pay for performance
Overpaid feds?
August 25th, 2009 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Cato’s Chris Edwards thinks federal employees are overpaid (h/t Alyssa Rosenberg at GovExec’s blog):
In 2008, the average wage for 1.9 million federal civilian workers was $79,197, which compared to an average $49,935 for the nation’s 108 million private sector workers (measured in full-time equivalents). The figure shows that the federal pay advantage (the gap between the lines) is steadily increasing.
This is a pretty useless comparison.
66 percent of federal employees are in higher-paid “management, business, and financial” or “professional” jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only about 36 percent of private sector employees are in those categories.
That means the private sector has a much higher concentration of low-wage jobs, in areas like the service sector, which bring down average wages. The best example is Wal-Mart, the largest private-sector employer in the U.S., with more than 1.5 million employees. The most common jobs at Wal-Mart are “sales associates” and cashiers, both of them low-skill jobs that pay scarcely above minimum wage.
A more useful comparison would be to compare federal jobs directly to their private-sector counterparts. This is impossible in many cases, of course, since we don’t have many private air traffic controllers or Border Patrol agents.
So instead Edwards compares FAA air traffic controllers to Wal-Mart cashiers and complains that the former group is overpaid. Not very useful.
Tags: Cato Institute
FEHBP open season starts Nov. 9
July 29th, 2009 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Steve Losey
The Office of Personnel Management just released guidance on the upcoming open season for choosing next year’s plans under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Federal employees will be able to select health, dental and vision insurance plans and enroll in a Flexible Spending Account between Nov. 9 and Dec. 14.
Anyone already enrolled in a health, dental or vision plan will stay enrolled in their current plan unless they choose to change or cancel it. But Flexible Spending Accounts don’t carry over from one year to another — enrollees must set up an account again if they want to keep directing pretax money to an account used to pay for medical and other expenses.
Last year’s open season was supposed to run from Nov. 10 to Dec. 8, but OPM extended it through January after Blue Cross Blue Shield tried to impose a controversial $7,500 deductible for out-of-network surgeries. OPM said that was a unique occurence, and doesn’t plan to extend this year’s open season.