Cliff-Walking 101

Federal workers are going to be doing the limbo on a hot seat for much of the rest of the year, says Senior Correspondent Mike Causey. Will sequestration kic...

Is Uncle Sam heading off the sequestration cliff and taking us with him? Or will Congress and the White House pull a post-election rabbit out of the hat?

Will vital (and some not-so-vital) services be interrupted or crippled? Could the economy go back into an even deeper recession, as sequestration opponents predict? Will tens of thousands of government contractors lose their jobs? Will tens of thousands of feds get furloughed? If so, who, where and for how long?

Can Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill get some meds or anger-management counseling that will enable them to be in the same room without breaking out in hives, or speaking with forked tongues?

We should have our answers no later than early January.

Meantime, here’s a thoughtful comment from a long-time, inside the Beltway fed who is going to grin and bear it. Here’s what he said:

“I suppose the result on Election Day will affect the cliff edge walkers. The timid will become even more so, and the bold will be bolder.

Maybe once a century or so, dramatic consequences need to be played out with real effects so a future generation will have a reference.

This kind of brinksmanship though scares the world and a loss of confidence is hard to get back.

Ben (Bernanke) at the Fed will be a busy boy if our cliff-walking skills are rusty and someone falls off.

Me? I will eye my cash reserve and plan for a few, several, missed paydays and wonder aloud some dark thoughts about the future.” — M.H.

Travel Costs: Who pays? GSA has frozen federal per diem rates for 2013 at current levels. This comes at a time when GSA is doing very little traveling of its own. This prompted a frequent traveler to ask:

“How did GSA come up with its estimate that freezing per diem rates is going to save $20 million? Do they seriously think that hotels and restaurants are not going to raise prices based on inflation/their increased cost of doing business?

Federal employees are still going to travel. And that $20 million cost is still going to be incurred. I guess, on second thought that GSA is right; it won’t be billed against the government budget. It will just be another case of taking money out of federal employees pockets.

Guess we should be thankful that GSA didn’t decide to roll back rates by 30 percent. But wait, Congress hasn’t been heard from. Yet!” — Road Warrior


NEARLY USELESS FACTOID

By Jack Moore and Amanda Iacone

President Andrew Jackson was the unwitting recipient of a 1,400-pound block of cheese. Two years after a dairy farmer in New York shipped the big cheese to the Big Cheese, the President invited several thousand people to the White House to help finish it off — the guests reportedly needed just two hours.

Read a letter President Jackson wrote referencing the cheese.

Or just read more details about the cheese and how it ended up in the White House from Mental Floss.


MORE FROM FEDERAL NEWS RADIO

President signs law delaying STOCK Act expansion
President Barack Obama has signed a law delaying an expansion of the STOCK Act that would have published the financial records of thousands of top managers throughout the executive and legislative branches in an online, searchable database.

Former GSA official Prouty fights back against firing
Paul Prouty, one of the General Services Administration’s officials caught up in the Western Regions Conference scandal, has appealed his termination.

Cox elected AFGE national president
The nation’s largest federal union swore in a new national president Thursday.The American Federation of Government Employees selected J. David Cox to fill the post and he will replace John Gage, who retired after serving as the union’s president since 2003.

BYOD part of new ‘digital ecosytem’
A week ahead of the Office of Management and Budget’s expected release of new bring-your-own-device guidelines, Michael Isman, vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, said he hopes the guidelines tie into other policies for social media, teleworking and even cloud computing.

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Courtesy of: https://www.justice.gov/archives/olp/staff-profile/former-assistant-attorney-general-office-legal-policy-hampton-y-dellingerHampton Yeats Dellinger

    For federal employee justice, some continuity in leadership

    Read more