Chairman Issa, Oversight Committee Submit $375 Billion in Savings to Super Committee, Warn of President’s Postal Gimmick

(WASHINGTON)—Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today submitted seven recommendations to the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (Joint Select Committee) that, if implemented, will provide a minimum of $375 billion in savings over ten years. The letter also suggests that the Joint Committee should not address U.S. Postal Service reform.

The Oversight Committee’s recommendations cover federal civilian retirement and federal workforce size and pay. Most of these items were included in the House Republican budget plan passed earlier this year. Several were also included in the Bowles-Simpson commission report.

Issa urged the Joint Select Committee to avoid adopting the same budgetary gimmick on postal reform that the President introduced in his deficit reduction package last month. That gimmick would change budget scoring rules to count savings to the Postal Service as savings to the taxpayer, even though the Postal Service does not spend taxpayer money for operations.

The Oversight Committee yesterday approved a bill authored by Chairman Issa and Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) which would restore the Postal Service to profitability while averting a taxpayer-funded bailout. A news release on that bill is available here.

“The federal government can and must do more to reduce red tape, ease the regulatory and bureaucratic burden on entrepreneurs and job creators, and right-size its mission with the economic reality. This includes cutting government spending. These recommendations will provide significant savings to taxpayers and help end the long-running habit of overspending and ever-increasing deficits in Washington,” Chairman Issa said.

Oversight Committee recommendations on Federal civilian retirement reform provisions to the Joint Select Committee include:

1. Changing the pension formula salary base to cover the highest five year’s average salary;

2. Increasing the employee Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS) contribution by 6.2 percent;

3. Increasing the employee Civil Service Retirement System contribution from 7 percent to 10 percent beginning in 2013;

4. Eliminating FERS for new hires and using savings to establish a defined contribution option to supplement the Thrift Savings Plan;

5. Limiting the FERS minimum supplement to employees subject to mandatory retirement.

Federal workforce size and pay recommendations include:

1. Reducing the overall federal workforce by 10 percent through attrition; hiring one new worker for every three who leave; and, instituting a pay freeze through 2015;

2. Eliminating periodic non-performance-based step increases.

The full text of the Oversight Committee letter is here.

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