A version of this column appeared on the Washington Business Journal's FedBizDaily blog. You can read it here.
By Stan Soloway, PSC President and CEO
Earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office released
a comprehensive report that confirmed what many, including the public employee
unions, have long believed: there is a pay gap between the public and private
sectors that becomes increasingly pronounced the higher up the skills ladder
you go. CBO's study also documented that, overall, federal employee benefits
are on average 48 percent higher than those received by private sector
employees.
The pay gap, along with other weaknesses in the federal
personnel system, is one main reason that the government has such a difficult
time hiring and retaining key technology skills to support its vital missions,
including cybersecurity. With the federal retirement rate rising (according to
OPM the retirement pace grew by 30 percent last year), and pay and hiring
freezes in effect across much of the government, the picture is truly
worrisome.
Against that backdrop, both the administration and Sens. Charles
Grassley and Barbara Boxer have come up with proposals that, for lack of a
kinder term, are recipes for disaster. Both want to restructure the way in
which caps on allowable contractor compensation are determined and limit them
to either the President's salary (Grassley/Boxer) or an arbitrary amount
loosely tied to federal salaries (administration). Both ideas lack substantive
merit and both will only exacerbate the government's workforce and mission challenges.
