By Jolie Lee
Federal News Radio

The nearly $1 trillion in spending cuts Congress recently approved won’t affect your pay and benefits right away, but you’re not out of the woods yet. A new bipartisan super committee of 12 lawmakers is tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion more in deficit cuts spread over the next decade.

“Part of our advocacy and communications efforts that we’re currently involved in will be re-focused on the 12 members of the super committee,” said Dan Adcock, legislative director for the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association.

Adcock is referring to NARFE’s “Protect America’s Heartbeat” campaign to “put a face on the federal workforce,” Adcock said.

According to the campaign website, “Federal employees ensure our food is safe and our air is healthy. Some spend their days fighting the spread of infectious disease, while others raise the alarm whenever a storm is coming.”

Some of the proposed changes to federal workers’ pay and benefits that have risen in debt reduction talks include:

• Change in COLA formula
  The proposal, first recommended by the President’s debt reduction commission, calls for a switch to a Chained Consumer Price Index to measure inflation. The Chained CPI would translate into a lower COLA, operating under the assumption that consumers will buy lower cost alternatives in a down economy.
• Change from high-three to high-five annuity formula
  The proposal to adopt a high-five formula would base feds’ annuity on the highest five years of salary instead of the highest three. This proposal is not included in any legislation and only appeared in December’s bipartisan fiscal commission report.
• Proposals that extend the pay freeze
  Most recently, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) proposed a bill to extend the federal pay freeze through 2014. Check out a list of other bills that affect federal pay and benefits.

“We depend on federal workers in all 50 states to keep America strong,” according to the campaign website. “They’ve already sacrificed pay and benefits to help solve our nation’s budget woes, even though they didn’t cause our economic crisis.”

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