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Return to Article: Bush seeks to end retirement penalty for part-time service

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  While Bush is being so generous he also might take the step of paying military retirees their disability, instead of charging them from their own pensions. They are the only retiree group in the United States that has their disability payment deducted from their pension. This has been corrected in some cases, but good old Uncle Sam is stealing billions from the military retiree and their families right now, and doesn't seem to bother him a bit. There's nothing like getting shot in the face, huh?

  Charlie Posted February 16, 2006 4:18 PM
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  President Bush has missed at least one the problems that federal workers face: A corrupted federal employee's workers compensation program. Until there is some form of external oversight, the Labor Department will continue violating federal laws, wasting taxpayer money on cover-ups and causing suffering for the many federal workers who are injured every year while doing their jobs. A federal worker benefit that has been so undermined certainly doesn't attract the skilled workers which the federal government can't seem to hire enough of.

  Just because the President is set for life doesn't mean he should be so insensitive to the rights of the federal workers.

  Robert M. Posted February 14, 2006 7:32 PM
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  There's one more step that needs to be taken and that's the elimination of the windfall tax that penalizes those civil servants in the CSRS system from collecting what they are entitled to under Social Security. The military is allowed to collect a separate military pension, Social Security benefits, and a civil service pension without penalty if they have contributed to these pensions in the required amount of time; CSRS take substantial cuts in the Social Security benefits they paid into and are entitled to because someone decided that civil servants can not collect from more than one government pension. These people have worked hard in both the private and public sectors and deserve what they earned.

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 14, 2006 3:19 PM
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  For those changing from full time to part time, why doesn't the government adjust the part time hours worked to a full year, i.e. part time employee must work 2,080 hours to mark a full year towards retirement. If you work 1,040 hours per year, you will need two years to gain one year toward retirement. This would greatly reduce the impact to the system.

  Ken Posted February 14, 2006 3:06 PM