On the shut down

It's looking increasingly likely that tonight at midnight, our Federal government will shut down. Since we'll be one of those 800,000 government workers affected by the shutdown, I thought I'd address a few of the things I've been hearing/reading.

Government workers make too much money!

Government employees do make, on average, more than the average US taxpayer. That is because most government workers are professionals (lawyers, engineers, scientists) who make more money in general. If you compare private and public sector, job title for job title, government workers earn less.

We make a conscious decision for Ry to work for the government. He went to a good school, works hard, and is good at what he does. For that, he makes about 80% of what a private sector employee would make. He also gets to come home at a reasonable hour in the evenings and has only had to work on a weekend a few times during his nearly 9 years in this role. I like having him around, and the kids do too. It's worth the smaller salary for Ry to have some work-life balance.

But what about those benefits?

While I can't speak to the benefits that everyone gets, we pay 30% of our health care insurance premiums. It's not a small $ amount every month and the insurance plan isn't great. I paid far less, for much better insurance before I quit my job to be a stay at home mom.
My husband also has a Thrift Savings Plan, which is nearly identical to a private sector 401K. He pays in, the government matches a little, and we hope that its value increases over time. In fact, his TSP is not even as good as a 401K in the great state of New Jersey. NJ taxes contributions rather than allowing tax-free contributions like they do for 401Ks.

And all that paid time off?

Ry has about as much vacation time as other folks in his profession and with his experience. He gets about 4 weeks a year. It's nice, but not outrageous. While he does earn a fair amount of sick time each year, his sick time is also his disability pay. If he gets sick, has to have surgery or becomes disabled, his sick leave is it.

Shouldn't we all share the pain?


Absolutely! As a matter of fact, Ry will not be getting raises for at least the next 2 years, since President Obama has frozen pay increases. He'd like to freeze them for the next 5 years. Frankly, if they had come and said Ry had to take furlough days or a wage cut, it would have sucked, but I would have understood. After all, we're trying to balance a budget, here.

But that's not really the point, is it?


The point is that next week, Ry is likely to have to go to work. Because of what he does and the way he is funded, he'll likely be working as long as the government is shut down. Of course, he won't get paid until the government is up and running again. If this shutdown lasts 27 days like the one in 1995 did, we'll be using a good amount of our savings to continue paying our bills and feeding our kids. A furlough that lasts a whole bunch longer than that will really start to hurt.

We're the lucky ones, though. At least Ry will (probably) be paid when this is all over. There are hundreds of thousands of "non-essential" employees who may not be paid at all. Consider for a moment what an unexpected 10% (or 15% or 20%) pay cut would mean to your family. Especially consider that the cut comes all at one time, not spread out over a year. How long would you be able to pay your mortgage?

And why is this all happening? Because the Congress can't act like grown ups and come to an agreement over a budget that has been in continuing resolution since last September. It's not even going to save any money! The furlough in 1995 cost $1.4 billion.

So anyway, I'm sorta grrr today. I'm grrr that our politicians would rather play politics than do their jobs. I'm grrr at all the people who think that we live in some kind of government employee bubble. And I'm grr at the fact that we'll be hurting for as long as this furlough lasts. So, we won't be eating out at all. We'll be taking our lunches. We're looking at our expenses and seeing what we can do without. And we're praying that this comes to a quick resolution so we can keep on being the bill-paying, tax-paying, society-contributing citizens our politicians say they want.