Perhaps the petition filed seeking an extra holiday on Christmas Eve has emboldened the federal workforce. As some will recall, a petition was filed asking for the extra holiday and the petition received more than the required 25,000 signatures requiring a response form the White House. There was a response and most federal employees received the extra holiday. It isn’t certain that the petition led to the granting of the holiday but who really knows what led to the decision?
As we have reported, payments to the G fund are being withheld to help the federal government pay its bills. A petition has now been filed asking that this practice cease and that the money continue to flow into the most popular of the offerings available to investors in the Thrift Savings Plan.
The petition contends that, “federal employees are, once again being singled out for disparate treatment as a result of this decision to stop funding our future retirement funds.” The petitioner is calling on the administration “to halt this practice of singling out the federal workforce to fund deficit the federal government’s funding deficit just because are benefits are easily accessible as a source of cash and we are an easy target for criticism.”
With the backdrop of the political battle underlying the debt limit debate, it is far from certain that this petition will have any impact on the decision for the government to start making the payments to the G fund that federal employees are entitled to receive. But, to the extent that the petition gains support from the workforce, it will generate publicity to create a new pressure point on the administration to seek the funds from some other source or, perhaps, to start furloughing employees since the ability to borrow more money will not exist until the debt limit is raised.
