She Works Hard for the Money

So You Better Treat Her Right.

Plenty of people would argue, not incorrectly, that there is government bloat. That it costs too much to run our government, and that a lot of that waste is in the form of how we pay government workers and contractors. There is ample evidence that being a govvie is a cushy job when it comes to pay and benefits. What gets overlooked oftentimes is how difficult it is to get one of those jobs, how challenging and thankless the work can be, how locked in you are when you get one, and how much those workers look forward to knowing there is the security of a government-backed pension at the end of their tenure.

Project 2025 aims to reduce government bloat one paycheck at a time, or thousands of paychecks at a time, by moving to a market-based model so that our federal workers can feel the same as our private sector workers. For many, that seems like it is a mighty fine idea. But let’s look at the fine print before we start spending our savings.

For this one, I’ll work backward.

“Career civil servants enjoy retirement 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” (p77). In 1978, Congress…