Bureau of Prisons Pay Protection Act
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Rep. Pettersen, Brittany [D-CO-7]
ID: P000620
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
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3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the esteemed members of Congress. The Bureau of Prisons Pay Protection Act - because who doesn't love a good oxymoron? Let's dissect this farce.
First off, the title is a work of art. "Pay Protection" sounds like something out of a bad infomercial. What they're really protecting is their own behinds from the fallout of another government shutdown. It's all about optics, folks.
Now, let's get to the meat of it - or rather, the lack thereof. The bill allocates "such sums as are necessary" for personnel salaries during a lapse in discretionary appropriations. That's code for "we have no idea how much this will cost, but we'll just wing it and hope nobody notices." No specific funding amounts or budget allocations? How convenient.
The Bureau of Prisons is the primary beneficiary of this largesse. Because, you know, correctional officers are the real heroes here. Never mind that the BOP has a history of mismanagement, corruption, and general incompetence. Let's just throw more money at it and hope for the best.
Notable increases or decreases? Ha! This bill is as transparent as a brick wall. We'll have to wait until the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) gets its hands on this mess to even begin to estimate the fiscal impact. But hey, who needs actual numbers when you've got feel-good rhetoric?
Riders and policy provisions? Oh boy, I can barely contain my excitement. There's a lovely little clause that ensures personnel salaries will be paid during a shutdown, because God forbid our brave correctional officers have to suffer through a few weeks without pay. Meanwhile, the rest of the country can just suck it up.
Fiscal impact and deficit implications? *chuckles* You think these geniuses actually care about the national debt? This bill is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. It's a temporary fix for a permanent problem - namely, Congress's inability to pass a decent budget.
In conclusion, this bill is a textbook case of legislative myopia. It's a symptom of a deeper disease: the inability of our elected officials to think beyond the next election cycle. They're more concerned with saving face than actually solving problems. And we, the voters, are complicit in this farce. Bravo, America.
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đź’° Campaign Finance Network
Rep. Pettersen, Brittany [D-CO-7]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 76 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise to delay. With the proper limitation of labor union actions, the FLRA should have limited reason for appeals. The EEOC’s federal employee section should be transferred to the MSPB, and many of the OCS’s investigatory functions should be returned to the OPM. The MSPB could then become the main reviewer of adverse actions, greatly simplifying the burdensome appeal process. Making Civil Service Benefits Economically and Administratively Ratio- nal. In recent years, the combined wages and benefits of the executive branch civilian workforce totaled $300 billion according to official data. But even that amount does not properly account for billions in unfunded liability for retirement and other government reporting distortions. Official data also report employment as approximately 2 million, but this ignores approximately 20 million contractors who, while not eligible for government pay and benefits, do receive them indirectly through contracting (even if they are less generous). Official data also claim that national government employees are paid less than private-sector employees are paid for similar work, but several more neutral sources demonstrate that pub- lic-sector workers make more on average than their private-sector counterparts. All of this extravagance deserves close scrutiny. Market-Based Pay and Benefits. According to current law, federal workers are to be paid wages comparable to equivalent private-sector workers rather than compared to all private-sector employees. While the official studies claim that federal employees are underpaid relative to the private sector by 20 percent or more, a 2016 Heritage Foundation study found that federal employees received wages that were 22 percent higher than wages for similar private-sector workers; if the value of employee benefits was included, the total compensation premium for federal employees over their private-sector equivalents increased to between 30 percent and 40 percent.18 The American Enterprise Institute found a 14 percent pay premium and a 61 percent total compensation premium.19 Base salary is only one component of a federal employee’s total compensation. In addition to high starting wages, federal employees normally receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment (available to all employees) and generous scheduled raises known as step increases. Moreover, a large proportion of federal employ- ees are stationed in the Washington, D.C., area and other large cities and are entitled to steep locality pay enhancement to account for the high cost of living in these areas. A federal employee with five years’ experience receives 20 vacation days, 13 paid sick days, and all 10 federal holidays compared to an employee at a large private company who receives 13 days of vacation and eight paid sick days. Federal health benefits are more comparable to those provided by Fortune 500 employers with the government paying 72 percent of the weighted average premiums, but this is much higher than for most private plans. Almost half of private firms do not offer any employer contributions at all.
Introduction
— 76 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise to delay. With the proper limitation of labor union actions, the FLRA should have limited reason for appeals. The EEOC’s federal employee section should be transferred to the MSPB, and many of the OCS’s investigatory functions should be returned to the OPM. The MSPB could then become the main reviewer of adverse actions, greatly simplifying the burdensome appeal process. Making Civil Service Benefits Economically and Administratively Ratio- nal. In recent years, the combined wages and benefits of the executive branch civilian workforce totaled $300 billion according to official data. But even that amount does not properly account for billions in unfunded liability for retirement and other government reporting distortions. Official data also report employment as approximately 2 million, but this ignores approximately 20 million contractors who, while not eligible for government pay and benefits, do receive them indirectly through contracting (even if they are less generous). Official data also claim that national government employees are paid less than private-sector employees are paid for similar work, but several more neutral sources demonstrate that pub- lic-sector workers make more on average than their private-sector counterparts. All of this extravagance deserves close scrutiny. Market-Based Pay and Benefits. According to current law, federal workers are to be paid wages comparable to equivalent private-sector workers rather than compared to all private-sector employees. While the official studies claim that federal employees are underpaid relative to the private sector by 20 percent or more, a 2016 Heritage Foundation study found that federal employees received wages that were 22 percent higher than wages for similar private-sector workers; if the value of employee benefits was included, the total compensation premium for federal employees over their private-sector equivalents increased to between 30 percent and 40 percent.18 The American Enterprise Institute found a 14 percent pay premium and a 61 percent total compensation premium.19 Base salary is only one component of a federal employee’s total compensation. In addition to high starting wages, federal employees normally receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment (available to all employees) and generous scheduled raises known as step increases. Moreover, a large proportion of federal employ- ees are stationed in the Washington, D.C., area and other large cities and are entitled to steep locality pay enhancement to account for the high cost of living in these areas. A federal employee with five years’ experience receives 20 vacation days, 13 paid sick days, and all 10 federal holidays compared to an employee at a large private company who receives 13 days of vacation and eight paid sick days. Federal health benefits are more comparable to those provided by Fortune 500 employers with the government paying 72 percent of the weighted average premiums, but this is much higher than for most private plans. Almost half of private firms do not offer any employer contributions at all. — 77 — Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy The obvious solution to these discrepancies is to move closer to a market model for federal pay and benefits. One need is for a neutral agency to oversee pay hiring decisions, especially for high-demand occupations. The OPM is independent of agency operations, so it can assess requirements more neutrally. For many years, with its Special Pay Rates program, the OPM evaluated claims that federal rates in an area were too low to attract competent employees and allowed agencies to offer higher pay when needed rather than increased rates for all. Ideally, the OPM should establish an initial pay schedule for every occupation and region, monitor turnover rates and applicant-to-position ratios, and adjust pay and recruitment on that basis. Most of this requires legislation, but the OPM should be an advocate for a true equality of benefits between the public and private sectors. Reforming Federal Retirement Benefits. Career civil servants enjoy retire- ment benefits that are nearly unheard of in the private sector. Federal employees retire earlier (normally at age 55 after 30 years), enjoy richer pension annuities, and receive automatic cost-of-living adjustments based on the areas in which they retire. Defined-benefit federal pensions are fully indexed for inflation—a practice that is extremely rare in the private sector. A federal employee with a preretire- ment income of $25,000 under the older of the two federal retirement plans will receive at least $200,000 more over a 20-year period than will private-sector work- ers with the same preretirement salary under historic inflation levels. During the early Reagan years, the OPM reformed many specific provisions of the federal pension program to save billions administratively. Under OPM pres- sure, Reagan and Congress ultimately ended the old Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) entirely for new employees, which (counting disbursements for the unfunded liability) accounted for 51.3 percent of the federal government's total payroll. The retirement system that replaced it—the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS)—reduced the cost of federal employee retirement dis- bursements to 28.5 percent of payroll (including contributions to Social Security and the employer match to the Thrift Savings Plan). More of the pension cost was shifted to the employee, but the new system was much more equitable for the 40 percent who received few or no benefits under the old system. By 1999, more than half of the federal workforce was covered by the new system, and the government’s per capita share of the cost (as the employer) was less than half the cost of the old system: 20.2 percent of FERS payroll vs. 44.3 percent of CSRS payroll, representing one of the largest examples of government savings anywhere. Although the government pension system has become more like private pension systems, it still remains much more generous, and other means might be considered in the future to move it even closer to private plans. GSA: Landlord and Contractor Management. The General Services Administration is best known as the federal government’s landlord—designing, constructing, managing, and preserving government buildings and leasing and
Introduction
— 7 — Foreword Instead, party leaders negotiate one multitrillion-dollar spending bill—several thousand pages long—and then vote on it before anyone, literally, has had a chance to read it. Debate time is restricted. Amendments are prohibited. And all of this is backed up against a midnight deadline when the previous “omnibus” spending bill will run out and the federal government “shuts down.” This process is not designed to empower 330 million American citizens and their elected representatives, but rather to empower the party elites secretly nego- tiating without any public scrutiny or oversight. In the end, congressional leaders’ behavior and incentives here are no differ- ent from those of global elites insulating policy decisions—over the climate, trade, public health, you name it—from the sovereignty of national electorates. Public scrutiny and democratic accountability make life harder for policymakers—so they skirt it. It’s not dysfunction; it’s corruption. And despite its gaudy price tag, the federal budget is not even close to the worst example of this corruption. That distinction belongs to the “Administrative State,” the dismantling of which must a top priority for the next conservative President. The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments, agencies, and millions of employees. Under Article I of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” That is, federal law is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress. This exclusive authority was part of the Framers’ doctrine of “separated powers.” They not only split the federal government’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers into different branches. They also gave each branch checks over the others. Under our Constitution, the legislative branch—Congress—is far and away the most powerful and, correspondingly, the most accountable to the people. In recent decades, members of the House and Senate discovered that if they give away that power to the Article II branch of government, they can also deny responsi- bility for its actions. So today in Washington, most policy is no longer set by Congress at all, but by the Administrative State. Given the choice between being powerful but vulnerable or irrelevant but famous, most Members of Congress have chosen the latter. Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision-making over a given issue to a federal agency. That agency’s bureaucrats—not just unelected but seemingly un-fireable—then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress’s preening cowardice. The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable—even to the President—every year. l A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency quietly strangles domestic energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes;
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.