Free Republic

Workers at polling places for today's primary and November's general election are being required to file tax withholding forms for the first time ever in a move that could be aimed at inflating the nation's employment numbers. Is this really a little Election Eve trick? Here's what I learned, you decide. The New York City Board of Elections, which uses 30,000 to 36,000 temporary workers for both the primary and general election, said it is being ordered by the Internal Revenue Service to make "employees" out of the very temporary workers who tend the polling sites. But an IRS spokesperson...

Earlier this year, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro chaired a panel that helped pave the way for a series of cost-cutting measures at the Pentagon, including efforts to cut overhead and dependence on outside contractors. Now he’s taking aim at something more sacrosanct: Compensation for service members, military retirees and their families.

As a retired federal government employee, I’m offended when I hear Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and a host of other conservative talk show hosts bash all levels of government employees. It seems the all-time favorite government employee to bash works for the Department of Motor Vehicles. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, federal government employees in 2008 earn an average of $67,691 compared to $60,046 in the private sector. This doesn’t count the benefits all federal government employees enjoy. Not all federal government employees make as much as their private sector counterparts, but many do. For example, a registered...

Federal workers have become a new flashpoint in the fight between Republicans and Democrats on the economy. House GOP Leader John Boehner (Ohio) this week blamed Democratic policies for exacerbating a gap in the pay between public and private workers that he claims was rising even as the country suffers through a housing crisis and high unemployment. House and Senate Republicans already have offered legislation to freeze the salaries of the 2 million federal employees through amendments to economic stimulus bills being ushered through Congress by Democrats. Each effort has failed due to opposition from Democrats.

Taxpayers must cover at least a third of a $3 trillion bill for public employee pensions even if lawmakers eliminate cost-of-living increases and raise the retirement age, according to an academic study. “Even if states uniformly eliminated generous early retirement deals and raised the retirement age to 74, the unfunded liability for promises already made would still be more than $1 trillion,” Joshua D. Rauh, associate professor of finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois, said in a statement.

WHEELING - The issue of Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement could become a weighty issue with employees at Ohio Valley Medical Center and East Ohio Regional Hospital. The employees were informed by letter this week of a proposal currently before the Health Care Reform Bill Commission. That proposal would cut Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement to hospitals where more than 5 percent of hospital employees are found to be 25 percent heavier than generally accepted height and weight guidelines.

The Obama Administration handed out more than $400 million in awards to federal employees last year, up by more than $80 million from the prior year, according to new government data. The biggest winners were air traffic controllers and top managers in Washington, a review of fiscal year 2009 salary reports from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management showed. OPM’s data, obtained by the Asbury Park Press through a freedom of information request, account for 1.3 million employees, or about 65 percent of the federal civilian work force.

A Virginia lawmaker whose district is home to many federal employees said on Tuesday that he does not support a pay freeze for government workers. Democratic Rep. Jim Moran, during a town hall meeting in Washington for employees of the Environmental Protection Agency, also admitted he doesn't believe parity between civilian and military pay can be accomplished this year in Congress, alluding to partisanship. In fiscal 2010, service members received a 3.4 percent pay raise while the civilian workforce received a 2 percent boost.

WASHINGTON, July 8, 2010 – A training program is equipping Defense Department civilian employees with the knowledge and skills needed to successfully deploy in support of humanitarian, reconstruction and combat-support military missions across the globe. A class of about 150 Defense Department civilians and contractors, part of the civilian expeditionary work force, learn the basics in emergency medical aid at Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center in central Indiana, June 29, 2010, before deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq. U.S. Army photo by John Crosby  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The joint civilian expeditionary work force training -- a 10-day...

Government officials spend a lot of time telling private employers how they may and may not run their employee retirement-savings plans. Turnabout is fair play, so I decided to take a look at what Uncle Sam offers in the defined-contribution pension plan for federal employees.

When you think of Americans in war zones, don't stop with those wearing combat fatigues and carrying big guns. Since 2001, more than 44,000 civilians have been deployed to dangerous places, notably Iraq and Afghanistan. But unlike those in uniform, who are linked by a common set of pay and benefits, the civilians work under a variety of standards that can cause confusion. Having employees labor next to each other in the same hazardous situations, but with different wages and health coverage, can produce added stress at a time when no one needs it. The Obama administration is trying to...

For quite some time now, I’ve been enviously looking in from the outside at what is easily the best 401(k) retirement plan in the country - The U.S. Government’s $254 billion Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). Several years ago, I had the good fortune to get to know Mike Causey, senior correspondent for Federal News Radio. He was extolling the many benefits of the TSP so I thought I’d check it out, and what I discovered blew me away.

There is a basic assumption among many of us conservatives that bothers me. Basically, the assumption is that if a person is a government employee, then he or she is lazy and shiftless, a parasite just eating up tax dollars without doing anything. "Bureaucrats" is what the sneering expression usually is. To put it mildly, this is unfair and not even in the ballpark of what's true.

Story #6: Obamacare Triples Tax on Seasonal Employees RUSH: I said earlier that we were not going to be distracted by all of this trumped-up, phony, used-for-cheap-political-purposes talk of Republicans inciting violence. "'With Obama's Government Takeover of Health Care, New Regulations Will Force Businesses to Pass Costs to Consumers and Hire Less Workers.'" This is from Katharine Seelye, Kit Seelye in: "'Employer Mandate Becomes Sticky Issue In Reconciling Bills,'" The New York Times's 'Prescriptions' Blog," October 31st last year. "'Those who are likely to be affected are those who work at smaller firms where coverage isn’t as comprehensive and their...

The Obama administration's personnel chief has assigned a task force to come up with "ironclad" data showing that feds do not earn far more than their private-sector counterparts. The move comes after organizations such as the libertarian Cato Institute and conservative lawmakers have criticized federal employees' pay, which they say is more than 50 percent higher on average than private-sector salaries. Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry told Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, at a Senate Appropriations Committee that such statements are "misinformation" and are not based on like comparisons.

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Federal Government Operating Status in the Washington, DC, Area the following message applies only to Thursday, February 11, 2010 Notice: Due to very high volume traffic access to all other OPM.gov pages has been modified. Select the following link to proceed to opm.gov. Select the follwing link to access e-QIP at its temporary address. Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are CLOSED. This Means . . . Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are closed. Nonemergency employees (including employees on pre-approved leave) will be granted excused absence for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. This...

Federal Government Operating Status in the Washington, DC, Area the following message applies only to Wednesday, February 10, 2010 Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are CLOSED. This Means . . . Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are closed. Nonemergency employees (including employees on pre-approved leave) will be granted excused absence for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. This does not apply to employees on leave without pay, leave without pay for military duty, workers' compensation, suspension, or in another nonpay status. Telework employees may be expected to work from their telework sites, as...

Federal Government Operating Status in the Washington, DC, Area the following message applies only to Tuesday, February 9, 2010 Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are CLOSED. This Means . . . Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are closed. Nonemergency employees (including employees on pre-approved leave) will be granted excused absence for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. This does not apply to employees on leave without pay, leave without pay for military duty, workers' compensation, suspension, or in another nonpay status. Telework employees may be expected to work from their telework sites, as...

Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are closed. Nonemergency employees (including employees on pre-approved leave) will be granted excused absence for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. This does not apply to employees on leave without pay, leave without pay for military duty, workers' compensation, suspension, or in another nonpay status. Telework employees may be expected to work from their telework sites, as specified in their telework agreements. Emergency employees are expected to report for work on time. Employees on alternative work schedules are not entitled to another AWS day off in lieu of the workday...