Trump isn't the only one targeting federal employees. House Republicans are pushing cuts to pension benefits
Source: CNN Politics
Published 9:00 AM EDT, Sat May 10, 2025
CNN — After months of contending with the Trump administration’s multi-pronged effort to downsize the federal workforce, government employees are now facing the possibility of another major change that could push even more of them out the door.
House Republicans are looking to make several big adjustments to federal workers’ retirement benefits to help pay for the party’s sweeping tax and spending cuts package. The House Oversight Committee last week approved a plan that would squeeze $50 billion in savings out of the retirement system over the next decade.
“They’re going to charge people more for the benefit, and then they’re going to reduce the benefit by changing the formula for how the benefit is calculated,” Jacqueline Simon, policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers union, told reporters on Monday.
The cuts could lead workers eligible for retirement to head for the exits in an effort to lock in their current benefits, union leaders say.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/10/politics/federal-employee-pension-benefits-republicans
Because the salaries for federal employees were ALWAYS less than that paid to comparable private sector positions, the sentiment was to make up for that by having a bit better benefits package AFTER retiring. IOW, a variation of "deferred compensation" in business lingo.
The Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990, which was codified in an Omnibus appropriations bill -
H.R.5241 - Treasury, Postal Service and General Government Appropriations Act, 1991
was an attempt to bring the federal salaries closer to that of equivalent private sector salaries. It created a system of calculating "locality pay" to adjust the salaries based on the prevailing wage rates in different geographic locations but after almost 35 years later, a parity has NEVER happened - mostly due to all kinds of excuses including "economic emergency" declarations and other crap. So now they want to come after the "deferred" part while zealously insisting on "contracting out", which is costlier.
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