Turner strongly opposes benefit cuts for federal workers

U.S. Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), who serves more than 30,000 federal employees in his home-state congressional district, won’t stand for a government reduction of their benefits or for those of any other current civil servant or retiree.

“We should not arbitrarily make changes to policies that families have planned their lives around, particularly when it affects current retirees with limited ability to make up for unanticipated reductions in estimated income,” wrote Rep. Turner in a May 9 letter to Jeff Pon, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

The congressman was writing “in strong opposition” to Pon’s recommended legislative proposals seeking benefit decreases for federal workers that Pon made in a May 4 letter sent to U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan. House appropriators are considering the president’s fiscal year 2019 budget proposal.

OPM administers the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), which Pon wrote together serve roughly 2.6 million federal retirees and survivors who receive monthly annuity payments.

The OPM legislative proposals, Pon wrote, would amend the United States Code to bring federal benefits “more in line with the private sector.” For instance, he suggested eliminating the FERS annuity supplement for new retirees and the supplementary annuity for survivor annuitants; increasing employee deduction rates for FERS by 1 percent a year “until the employee is contributing half of the current regular FERS employee normal cost percentage;” and reducing the cost-of-living adjustments under CSRS, while eliminating them for current and future retirees under FERS.

“These proposals would affect all current retirees and employees, rather than making changes on a prospective basis,” Rep. Turner pointed out in his letter to Pon. “This breaks a promise to current federal employees and retirees.”

The congressman also noted that of the more than 30,000 federal employees in his district, over 27,000 of them work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base “every day to protect our nation from numerous threats across the world.” Another 2,200-plus federal employees work at the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center on a daily basis, he added.

“Despite their hard work and dedication, few groups have been asked to sacrifice more than federal employees,” wrote Rep. Turner, who said they’ve been facing economic challenges since 2008 when they collectively lost $182 billion in the form of pay and benefit cuts.

Additionally, he wrote, federal workers also have suffered a three-year pay freeze, two years of 1 percent pay increases, mandated increases for employee contributions to their retirement accounts, “and approximately 750,000 workers lost up to eight days of pay because of the devastating impacts of sequestration in 2013.”

The congressman told Pon that maintaining a world-class workforce in America requires that the federal government also maintain a competitive benefits package that befits such a workforce.

“With the United States’ growing economy and a tightening labor market, we cannot afford to make the federal government a less attractive place to work by diminishing the very benefits that help the government keep pace with jobs in the (often higher-paying) private sector,” Rep. Turner wrote.

Federal workers and retirees who have dedicated their careers to public service “deserve much better from us,” wrote Turner.