El Cheeto's dream to protect "my people" in the federal bureaucracy and fire his enemies just might come true, with a sneaky provision in the budget bill. Via HuffPost:
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed 215-214, cuts $1 trillion in federal health and food programs while adding nearly $4 trillion in tax cuts steered primarily to the wealthy. But it also includes a little-noticed provision that would force new federal employees to either give up traditional job protections or take a significant cut to their compensation.
If the measure survives in whatever package the GOP-controlled Senate passes, unions warn it could turn the federal workforce into an old-school spoils system.
“It’s a huge policy change masquerading as a small budget provision,” said Daniel Horowitz, legislative director at the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing more than 800,000 workers.
“It torches the civil service.”
And it does so in a sneaky way.
What, Republicans SNEAKY? Tell me more!
Federal workers receive retirement benefits through what’s known as the Federal Employees Retirement System, or FERS. Retirees are paid an annuity based upon their length of service, funded through contributions from both employees and their agencies. Current workers chip in a certain percentage of their paycheck into FERS — either 0.8% or 4.4%, depending on when they were hired — and the government covers the rest.
[...] Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union representing 100,000 workers, said the policy amounts to a “bribe.”
“Another way to look at it is criminal extortion,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘We will charge you more … if you choose to access the laws that are on the books.’”
