How many federal and postal workers can retire?

Washington Post ^ | May 21, 2011 | Ed O'Keefe

[Poundstone]

About 550,000 full-time career federal government and U.S. Postal Service could hang it up and move on at anytime because they are eligible to retire, according to government statistics. The eligible workers represent about a quarter of the 2.4 million permanent full-time employees collecting government or postal paychecks.

[muawiyah]

I have no problem whatsoever with the debt ceiling, but YOUR PROBLEM is you keep lumping in military, postal, and OTHER GOVERNMENT pensions with other sorts of government obligations.

BTW, there's no case law regarding that first sentence because you haven't looked into post Civil War Pensions.

One of the reasons military pensions continue to be UNFUNDED is very simple ~ with a Constitutional Obligation to pay them (14th Amendment) they don't need to be. The government would presumably have to sell assets to cover those pensions if it ran out of money.

Way back in WWII somebody (Congress I think) enticed men to join the military with the promise of a BONUS for service.

Payment was delayed. Eventually it was paid ~ but that was after the Veterans March on the Mall that had Eisenhower and McArthur being forced to clear the area with a display of military force.

As you no doubt recall the United States of America was created by a citizen army ~ they were paid little more than pocket change, cornbread and a promise of land patents for their heirs. The government made good with the land patents, and later on PENSIONS. I've read through all my ancestor's Revolutionary War pension applications. Most interesting!

[Stand Watch Listen]

Because of the increasing pressure to reduce government spending, HR offices may soon receive directions to only implement one new hire for every two vacancies (1 for 2).