As another poster stated above, the changes are based on the Employment Cost Index. Biden calculated this just as Clinton, Bush II, Obama and Trump did.
And the Alternative Pay Plan is MUCH lower than if Biden had allowed the statutory increase to take affect.
No foul on Biden or any of the other President’s here. They are simply following the law as written.
There are quite a few things I would be willing to cut, including significant cuts on the defense and domestic sides.
■■■■ can construction of some Navy carriers and other ships and cut force sizes overall.
Abolish the Department of Education and some other useless agencies.
Unfortunately, for all the “shut down the government” talk, Republicans have made few significant cuts when they have had full power.
Few? They’ve never, ever significantly cut anything.
The Republican Congress did abolish the Board of Tea Appeals in 1996.
Yes, that was a real thing.
Therein lies the problem, nearly thirty years ago they eliminated an obsolete board. More was saved striking a fleet tug from the register.
Great start.
Yes it is vased on employment cost.
If the cost of health insurance rises, government workers get the (more expensive) HI, plus also get a permanent increase in cash wages on top of that.
Health insurance ALWAYS rises. The government still pays the same percentage of the health insurance cost (about 75%, I think), but the employee/retiree pays the increase in the other 25%. My cost for health insurance for me and my wife will be going up about $40 a month next year.
Retiree COLAs are a different calculation, and vary depending on whether you’re CSRS or FERS (CSRS is usually 1% higher - for 2024, it will be 3.2% vs 2.2% for FERS).
According to CBS
" . . .Starting from 2021 to today, the price of everyday consumer items has risen 16.7% while wage growth has been roughly 12.8%, Foster said. "
That certainly explains why consumers think inflation is being under-reported.
Inflation includes a lot of things like home utilities, insurance, monthly subscriptions etc. none of which are the “everyday consumer items” from which consumers draw their impression.
It does not explain however why federal employees welfare recipients etc. pay raises above an beyond inflation.
I would note that even with pay adjustments, civil service employees as a whole remain behind their private sector equivalents in pay and benefits, particularly those on the General Schedule or Wage Schedule.
GS 5 & 7 will never be lucrative and even at GS-15 Step 10, a person would still be way behind their private sector counterpart.
Clearly Federal pay is not excessive, except in the EXTREMELY rare cases of individuals like Fauci, who are in those positions, which you could count with your fingers, that are not covered under the regular civil service rules.
Problems is, IMHO…
People see mostly the “higher earners” and then think of them as the norm.
They see the Judges, and not the clerks.
They see the Admirals/Generals and not the E-4 making less than $30K a year struggling to support a family because they were ordered to move and so the wife is unemployed.
WW
I would suggest that Fauci’s pay was not excessive in terms of what private sector doctors with his knowlege, experience, and responsibility routinely make.
It is not.
I was trying to make the point that Fauci’s pay was the extremely rare outlier in Federal civil service world.
The vast majority of scientists, doctors and other high level professionals make, at best, the top end of the current Senior Executive Service schedule, which is capped at Executive Schedule Level II, which I think is about $212,000 for 2023.
Military will likely get the full 5.2% rather than the 4.7% across the board pay increase, due to language that will be included in the NDAA that is expected to pass. Active duty military does not receive locality pay, so normally that portion of the increase does not apply.
Other than the military, no changes expected in Biden’s announced pay plan.
BAH and BAS are adjusted by the locality rate, but of course, single soldiers living in the barracks do not receive those allowances.
Just curious, do you now how the freedom caucus folks voted in regards to spending more money for military pay?
WW
The provision was added in committee. No floor votes at this point on the matter.
Thank you.
WW
