| Comment Number: | OL-10506473 |
| Received: | 3/11/2005 3:58:50 PM |
| Subject: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| Title: | National Security Personnel System |
| CFR Citation: | 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
The NSPS is a Trojan Horse. The illusion of Pay for Performance is a subterfuge at best. A quote from today’s Washington Post is more indicative of the true agenda. "Administration officials oppose pay parity increases, in part because they say boosting raises in non-defense agencies diverts critical money from programs and operations". For members of the DOD-NSPS the "non-defense" part may give a false sense of security, but the true intent is stated in the "diverts critical money from programs and operations" portion of the statement. Notice the lack of emphasis on pay for performance in that statement. NSPS will allow the President to direct the Secretary of Defense to limit the civilian annual pay increase to a maximum percentage of his own choosing. This year that percentage would be 2.3 percent. This will generate huge savings and provide a ready source of funds for programs and operations. There will be no Congressional oversight. Congress does not mind being excluded because other additional features built into the NSPS also have the long term effect of lowering the average income of the NSPS employee. The lowered incomes generate savings for Congress because retirement costs will be less and TSP matching funds will be reduced. There is a very simple way to prove or disprove the planned effect that NSPS will have on the average employee’s income. Each year the NSPS employee should compare his/her salary with what it would have been had he/she still been in the GS ranks. OPM will publish these salary tables each year as long as there are still GS employees in the government. Of course it would be to the government`s advantage to not have GS`s so that there would be no comparison, but administration efforts to expand pay for performance to all areas of the government are presently meeting with congressional doubts. According to many previous pay for performance government programs about 60 to 70 percent of the NSPS employees will find themselves falling behind where they would have been had they still been General Schedule. I hope I am 100 percent wrong, and I hope the future NSPS employee salaries prove it to me as compared to the GS. joe.newman@robins.af.mil