sure wish my supervisor would take a buyout. He couldn't be more useless and yet he is still a supervisor. Keeping him in his position is what is wrong with government.

Cuts, cuts and more cuts ... slowly "boiling the frog will"...

Any possibility of buy-outs being offered by the Social Security Administration????

Social Security and IRS are two of the places where they need to increase staffing not decrease. I know IRS is way understaffed in enforcement. The population is aging and more and more will be on Social Security soon. This creates a higher need for Soc Sec not less. But, a lot of agencies could probably say that as well, and no one will care.

I agree the IRS is understaffed in critical positions such as RA's and RO's, the people that actually WORK to bring in the money. But it is also riddled with grossly overpaid and grossly underworked positions that were created as a result of executive empire building, and as a means to reward executive favorites. Or in some cases, to 'hide' employees/managers in positions where they can't do any damage. Millions could be saved each year by eliminating the positions, or at least by stopping the creation of new ones. But like you say, no one in the gov't seems to care. Bet the public would care, if they knew!

$25k tops is not enough of a retirement incentive to retire as a USG senior employee. For the first half of the incentive, consider paying a certain amount of tax-free cash at upwards of $50k with $25k the floor for all eligible, and issue U.S. Government Savings Bonds at a matching dollar rate for the other half of the incentive package. Would create immediate head-space across all USG levels. Rules would include that retirement must occur within 1st quarter of any new FY to allow maximum recovery of salary/benefits for remainder of the FY. The agency has already received the money for a full FY…a win-win.

The law of unanticipated consequences needs to be considered here. Back in the mid-'90s, we had many employes in my agency who were retirement-eligible. As soon as the watercoler buyout rumors started, and with little information from our "leaders" as to downsizing plans, many of those in this group chose to delay their departure, hoping to cash in on getting a buyout. As a result, when downsizing did become necessary, the agency woulnd up paying far more in buyouts than it had anticipated, given that the normal attrition rate had fallen to zero in the interim.