Do retired government workers and military personnel continue to receive retirement benefits if they are also drawing income as government contractors? If so, why? What would be the public interest benefit of such a policy? Wouldn’t it be a considerable benefit to suspend retirement benefits so long as they continue to draw public-sector-source income?
Hell, my uncle retired from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel, and he now works for the Dept. of the Army as a GS worker a couple of levels higher than the equivalent of a LTCOL. As far as I know, he still draws his pension.
The thing is, they’re two totally separate jobs that just happen to be for the same ultimate employer. He did his 25 years in the Army and got his pension. If he goes back to work for the government (or even the Army), that’s a totally separate job, and what he did before shouldn’t be affected by that.
And, in the grand scheme of things, the amount of money that you’re talking about is probably smaller than a rounding error in the Federal budget somewhere.
Yes, if someone is retired from the military or the civil service under full retirement, then they can draw their retirement pay while working in any private sector job. Those benefits are fully budgeted for during their time in Federal service through regular contributions to various accrual accounts.
As far as why retirees who are government contractors continue to receive retirement benefits, it is probably because it may be difficult to track the literally millions of military and civil service retirees and determining where they are working and what work they are doing for that company.
I’m not aware of any serious proposals in recent years to specifically target the retirement benefits of those who work for government contractors. There is currently a proposal to require any military retiree who is eligible for health benefits through his employer to forgo the health care plan. This is essentially a budget-saving measure, because any military retiree with half a brain would opt for the government’s health care plan (which costs around $250 a year in out-of-pocket enrollment fees, and the government pays the rest of the costs) rather than health care plans offered by employers, which averages out-of-pocket costs in the thousands of dollars per year.
My old man drew his USMC retirement, his County retirement and his SS until he passed. He had earned all three, so I don’t see a problem with it.
Airman’s stepfather retired from the Coast Guard and is now eligible to collect his pension. He also works for the USPS and will be eligible to collect on that pension when he retires.
I’ll second what bump said. People who double-dip have earned both pensions, provided they meet the requirements set out by each job; that is, years of service, and so forth. It’s actually in the public interest to allow this because people with military service now have inducement to join the federal workforce after retirement. It’s just a way to keep the talent in-house, if you know what I mean.
This is the case with Tricare Reserve Select. If Airman or I were to join the federal workforce, we would have to forgo Tricare (which, at $200 a month, is cheaper) in favor of the government insurance. We’d still be able to keep it if we had insurance through some other employer or program (or even the VA, which is the case for both Airman and me), but Tricare always pays as a secondary carrier no matter what your other insurance is.
My parents had fun with this when my brother tore his ACL playing football and the school liability insurance also insisted on being the secondary carrier. Neither wanted to pay anything.
As to the OP, I don’t see the problem. Why do I care whether the “double dipper” works their second career for the government or a private company? If we withheld his pension he would likely look elsewhere for a job. So we would still be paying his pension and paying someone else to do the job.
Military pay isn’t that generous to begin with, especially if you look at long-time officers with advanced degrees. So the pension that comes after 15 years of service is a pretty major incentive to keep the most experienced and talented people. Otherwise many would leave after a few years for much better pay in the private sector.
For one personal anecdote, my dad was discharged almost 20 years ago as an O-3. He was basically a systems engineer who worked for the Air Force. In short order, he was able to find a job that paid twice as much, and it didn’t take long before he was earning three times his military pay. (He was actually a few years short of full retirement, so he spent many years as a reservist to earn the full pension). He’s earned the pension, regardless of whether he continues to work in the private sector or ever does any government work in the future.
My understanding is that in many cases, the retiree-contractor is doing essentially the same job as he or she was doing as an active government employee, but is ultimately costing the government more through higher pay and middleman fees to the contract service provider. Why not require people to “un-retire” in those situations?
How is this different from any other person that came from the private sector? All you’re doing is adding an additional layer of requirements/paperwork/processing that is either going to force qualified government workers into the private sector, or encourage less-qualified private sector contractors to work for the government - neither of which really fix the issue at hand.
Much better to just pay qualified government employees more while finding other ways to discourage retirement to begin with.
Another thought: double dipping is generally defined as an attempt to earn multiple government benefits during the same period of government service. So, for example, someone’s ability to receive military retirement pay and VA disability compensation based on serving in the armed forces is sharply limited, since those two benefits were based on the person doing one job.
There have been changes to allow some very disabled military retirees to receive the full amount of VA disability compensation and military retirement pay, but for most people, the amount of retirement pay would be reduced to allow receipt of the full amount of non-taxable VA compensation.
Earning a retirement check based on having held a job with the government in the past, and working for a private business which has a contract with the government, isn’t really double-dipping – one check is due to past service with the government, the other check is due to current service to a private company. That’s not really double dipping as the term is typically used.
Double-dipping? Hell, it’s triple dipping! They take that pension and that paycheck and purchase treasury bonds with it, which pay them even more money though interest! We’ve got to stop this raping of the Treasury by these hooligans. How dare they derive income from multiple sources?!
:rolleyes:
My father-in-law triple dips. He retired from the military after 20 years and went to work for the federal government. Those 20 years count for his length of service in the government so he could retire from the gov. in only 10 more years. Then he worked in the private sector until he earn enough time to get social security. He gets all three now.
The rules for this kind of thing change constantly so two different people may get very different benefits, depending on how old they are and when they did what. For example, I think SS is means tested for government retires these days. Some people get lucky and get more than their fair share out of government programs and some people aren’t as lucky.
A person can also retire from the military, take another federal job, and then combine the two retirements by “buying back” the military time. It’s generally not worthwhile to do so, since federal retirement is based on your high three years.
As for “unretiring” people, I know that the State Department hires annuitants for special jobs, as their expertise in some areas is extremely valuable.
ETA: I see shiftless already addressed the first point.
Just in case someone gets the wrong idea from that first paragraph. Active duty military pay social security taxes. Most (if not all) federal employees pay social security taxes. But, as the second paragraph says, the rules are subject to change.
What about all these people that worked at Walmart for 25 years. Then reach age 65, start drawing social security retirement benefits, but they continue working at WalMart as greeters? Is that double dipping in the same vein, as described by the OP. Maybe the retirement age for receiving social security benefits should be raised to 70.
SS isn’t “means tested” (as I understand the term) for federal retirees, but there is an offset applied under certain conditions. I’m a retired federal employee under CSRS, which means that while I was working for the government I never paid into SS. I have some SS credit from previous employment, but not enough to qualify for benefits. If I were to return to work in a non-government job and earn enough credits to qualify for SS, my SS benefits would be adjusted because even though I would have enough credits to qualify I wouldn’t have enough years of what are called “significant earnings” under SS. Also, on an unrelated matter, if I were to apply for survivor benefits on my late wife’s SS account those benefits would be offset by a percentage of my CSRS pension, in my case reducing them to zero.
Well, it’s not entirely unheard of. I know someone who took early retirement as a public school teacher and part of the conditions of the contract is that she is not allowed to do any paid work under X conditions (I can’t remember whether X is “for the same school district,” “for any public school district,” or "teaching of any kind.)
My (private) employer has a rule that if you take retirement, you cannot come back as a contractor.
Perhaps, but the present state of affairs is not likely to be changed because that was the deal offered when the people currently collecting pensions enlisted/were commissioned/hired. It’s a perk of the job. God knows military pay is shitty enough as it is.
The public interest benefit is being able to hire X number of government workers and military personnel today and not having to pay them as much right now. If you suspend “double dipping”, you’ll have to start paying people more since their projected post-retirement earnings will go down and the jobs will be less attractive.
Those are not the same at all. If you want a rule that says retired military can’t work on a government contract - great. I have marketable skills, I’ll do something else. But you can’t tell me you want me to work but you want to pay me less than someone who has a differnt employment history.
Edited to clarify that I’m responding to Acsenray’s 10:20 (eastern) comment.