Your Halloween Preview: Trick or Treat, except minus the treat

If there are young kids in your life (or have been) chances are you enjoy Halloween. Or at least watching them enjoy it.

In most parts of the country, Halloween is a one-time (Oct. 31) event. People get treats and go around scaring other people. In that respect, almost every day is Halloween (with the tricks, minus the treats) for members of the federal workforce. At least when Congress is in town!

In the real world Halloween, dutiful parents check the goodie bags of treats their kids bring home. In Washington and other major federal centers, suspicious and nervous in the civil service folk routinely check the contents when Congress or the White House proposes a “reform” package.

Just last year, the White House crafted Washington’s version of Godzilla or Freddy Krueger: It was christened “sequestration” a process few had heard of or understood. Bottom line, it was a proposed series of annual cuts so awful (some would say stupid) that the creators thought it would never be put into play. In this case, the Sequestration monster. Many people blamed Congress for the series of automatic, decade-long cuts. But, as The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward reported sequestration was designed at the White House. It was intended to be a political doomsday bomb Congress wouldn’t dare trigger. Except it did and feds and their agencies live with it today, in the form of political and budgetary fallout. Your Halloween Preview: Trick or Treat, except minus the treat Congress took most of the heat for sequestration and the government-wide shutdown. But there is blame enough to go around, and feds are well aware they are often caught in the middle when politicians butt heads, stall action or simply do nothing, which has become a Washington art form.

Federal workers, their pay and benefits, dodged a bullet this year. Mainly because Congress couldn’t (or didn’t) get its act together enough to accomplish anything. The White House — because this is an election year — withdrew its support of a plan to reduce future pension payments for federal retirees. But that’s expected to go back in the next budget.

In 2013, the start of sequestration, politicians implemented their own version of The Hunger Games. Unlike the movie, the victims weren’t chosen by lot. Rather. the punishment was spread governmentwide, impacting everything from pay raises and promotions to training, travel and requiring higher pension contributions for new hires.

Gridlock prevented most political mischief aimed at the civil service this year. But in 2013, for the first time since the Clinton administration, the White House and a GOP-led House play caused a governmentwide shutdown. It caused lots of problems, disrupted many operations and didn’t save a nickel because workers were paid for their time off.

The 2013 shutdown was similar to the 1995-96 action, which also tarnished both political parties, although chief casualty was then House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich.

For federal workers, history keeps repeating itself to the point where, some years, it seems like every day is a bad version of Halloween. For more on what’s ahead, listen to yesterday’s Your Turn radio show. It featured a conversation with retiring Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who talks about a time when there were more pro-fed politicians, and when Democrats and Republicans worked together to protect them. Late in the show, Janet Kopenhaver of Federally Employed Women talks about what feds can expect in 2015. To listen, anytime, click here.

NEARLY USELESS FACTOID:

By Michael O’Connell

The 1984 horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street was Johnny Depp’s first film.

Source: IMDB

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