Republican Economic Policy: Screw the Civil Service

*Andra Watkins is an award winning author, survivor of Christian Nationalism and an expert on Project 2025. Read and support her important work here: How Project 2025 Will Ruin Your Life

By Andra Watkins

Today, we are covering what Project 2025 has in store for federal retirement benefits. Fascist Republicans and their billionaire overlords want to “reform” them. (Which would apply to existing federal retirees as well as future ones. And these policies would empower states to do the same thing to their pension plans.)

Project 2025, page 77

Reforming Federal Retirement Benefits. Career civil servants enjoy retire-ment benefits that are nearly unheard of in the private sector. Federal employees retire earlier (normally at age 55 after 30 years), enjoy richer pension annuities, and receive automatic cost-of-living adjustments based on the areas in which they retire.

Defined-benefit federal pensions are fully indexed for inflation—a practice that is extremely rare in the private sector. A federal employee with a preretirement income of $25,000 under the older of the two federal retirement plans will receive at least $200,000 more over a 20-year period than will private-sector workers with the same preretirement salary under historic inflation levels.

During the early Reagan years, the OPM reformed many specific provisions of the federal pension program to save billions administratively. Under OPM pressure, Reagan and Congress ultimately ended the old Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) entirely for new employees, which (counting disbursements for the unfunded liability) accounted for 51.3 percent of the federal government's total payroll.

The retirement system that replaced it—the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS)—reduced the cost of federal employee retirement disbursements to 28.5 percent of payroll (including contributions to Social Security and the employer match to the Thrift Savings Plan). More of the pension cost was shifted to the employee, but the new system was much more equitable for the 40 percent who received few or no benefits under the old system.

Let’s translate the highlighted language into what it means for real-world seniors and workers relying on these programs to fund their retirement.

Career civil servants enjoy retirement benefits that are nearly unheard of in the private sector.

It’s true that many workers at every government level enjoy generous retirement benefits, particularly those who still have access to defined-benefit pensions. Defined-benefit pensions were not always “unheard of in the private sector;” in fact, the proportion of private sector workers who had access to defined-benefit pensions fell from 38% to 20% between 1980 and 2008 (Source: SSA.gov).

Civil servants typically accept lower salaries than private sector employees doing similar work. They often understand that their roles come with a degree of “public-facing” responsibilities, which transforms these jobs into online harassment and vitriol whenever they venture into their communities.

Generous benefits, like health insurance and pension plans, have historically been an incentive for people to forego larger private sector salaries in favor of serving the public good.

The framers of Project 2025 don’t care about those commitments. They elevate private sector workers over civil servants in an effort to diminish the historic benefits of devoting one’s life to public service.

Defined-benefit federal pensions are fully indexed for inflation—a practice that is extremely rare in the private sector.

Translated: Corporate America did away with defined-benefit pensions decades ago because they bought-and-paid politicians to make this screwing of the American workforce possible. They used the same bait-and-switch language Project 2025 tries to deploy today: American workers are better off when they determine their own destinies.

Only that isn’t true.

As a result of decades of supposedly “pro-worker” policies, nearly half of American households have no retirement savings. (Seriously, click the link to USAfacts.org. It is gut-wrenching.)

When Americans are forced to negotiate their own health care AND fund their own vacations AND pay for their own childcare AND find decent educational opportunities for their children AND pay for numerous “necessary” extracurriculars AND commute AND pay down student loans AND AND AND…retirement savings becomes this nebulous thing people need someday.

More of the pension cost was shifted to the employee.

And when this shift happened in concert with other cuts to benefits and stagnant wages, more than half of Americans choose to fund literally anything but their retirement.

Which is something defined benefit pensions were designed to allay. “We’ll put this much money aside monthly beginning in your 20s. By the time you retire, the time value of money will give you a nest egg, without your having to think about it overly much.”

So whenever Fascist Republicans talk about “empowering workers to make their own choices” and similar, call bullshit.

Republicans and their billionaire corporate overlords want to strip all Americans of every retirement benefit. They hate graphs like this one. Their seminal economic policy is this: Strip American workers of options. Give them no choice. Grind them down until they will do anything we ask of them for as little money as possible. No benefits. No retirement. They can work to contribute to billionaire shareholder bottom line until they die.

VOTE BLUE IN NOVEMBER, AMERICANS. Or watch every kind of retirement savings evaporate and die.