Language that would have given most feds (those hired since January, 1984) retirement credit for unused sick leave was dropped from the Senate version of the Defense Authorization Act. Unlike workers under the older CSRS retirement program, FERS has a use-it-or-lose-it-system.

FERS Flu is our unscientific name for what happens to many healthy feds in their last years of service: A lot of them get sick a lot.

Symptoms: People who never missed a day end up, toward the end of their career, taking lots of sick leave. Often a day or two at a time. Often around weekends. Because it is sick leave, and not scheduled vacation, the attacks often come as a last-minute surprise to the victim's boss, and coworkers.

According to the government, FERS flu costs over $60 million each year in workflow disruptions, etc.

Opponents say that allowing FERS employees to credit their unused sick leave toward their retirement service time (which CSRS workers can do) would cost the taxpayers even more over the long-haul in the form of higher retirement benefits.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) said he will try to get the FERS flu language restored when the Senate and House go to conference on the must-pass Defense bill.

This is the second time this year the Senate has scuttled the FERS provision.

It, along with several other pro-fed proposals, was embedded in the administration's must-pass Tobacco bill. The House version included all the beneficial changes for feds. But the House took the unusual step of agreeing in advance with whatever the Senate okayed without going to a conference to iron out differences. The Senate bill included a major improvement for federal-postal investors, okaying a Roth option for investors in the Thrift Savings Plan, but it dropped all other pro-fed provisions including the FERS flu cure.

Some federal/postal lobbyists say the items were dropped from the Tobacco and Defense bills because of pressure from the White House which, they said, either objected to their costs or feared they would delay the fast-tracked bills.

Several members of Congress, getting an earful from nonfederal constituents, say the FERS flu cure and other proposals would be costly and outrageous add-ons to the already generous federal benefits package.

Backers of the changes, which would allow former FERS employees to buy back service time and permit CSRS workers to work part-time when phasing into retirement, say they will fight for them when Senate-House conferees meet to work out a compromise in the Defense bill.

But given the track record so far, and the fact that Congress is heading off for its lengthy, European-style August-September break, the odds of a FERS flu cure not so hot.

For the Senate's time-remaining schedule, click here, and for the House schedule, click here.

Nearly Useless Factoid
by Suzanne Kubota

The air around a lightning bolt is superheated to about five times the temperature of the Sun. This sudden heating causes the air to expand faster than the speed of sound, which compresses the air and forms a shock wave; we hear it as thunder. Don't touch. Hot.

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com