Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) introduces the latest GOP plan to make people suffer.
If House Speaker John Boehner can
force his fractured caucus to coalesce around a budget, that budget will
screw federal workers (as usual) by both cutting their retirement fund and increasing their health insurance premiums.
House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) last week unveiled the spending blueprint—which aims to achieve several hundred billions of dollars in savings through measures affecting federal employees—but did not initially release the specifics.
After those become known, groups representing federal workers blasted the House Republican budget, saying it calls for the most drastic cuts for U.S. government employees in recent history.
Richard Thissen, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, criticized the plan as a "grossly unfair and misguided budget." He added that the changes amount to "nothing more than a pay cut for federal employees and broken promises to federal retirees living on fixed incomes."
All part of their plan to prove government can't work—make government employees hate their jobs, destroy morale, and make working for the government as unattractive as possible. In this case, they would lower the rate of return in the Thrift Savings Plan, a retirement program available just to federal and armed services employees, while also forcing federal employees to contribute more to the plan. Less pay for a lower rate of return on it. To punish federal employees further, the Republicans would also require higher health insurance premiums paid by the employee and also reduce premium subsidies for retirees' health benefits.
Price says that his budget "demand[s] Washington live within its means," and "force[s] government to be more efficient, effective and accountable." By that he means forcing federal employees to retire into poverty.