NATCA Bookshelf

• What does this mean? This letter comes from the OPM and represents the Administration's desire to cut retirement benefits for federal employees. It includes proposed legislative language for Congressional consideration. That means that Congress still needs to act on and enact the proposals contained in the letter. • What's the background? The proposals included in the letter have been included in President Trump's budget proposals. As you know, we are currently in an environment where anti-federal employee proposals like this are likely. When the current President took office, we knew these sorts of proposals were going to become common. Attacks on federal employees, specifically the elimination of the annuity supplement, have been present in not just the President's budget proposals, but also House Republicans Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 budget proposal. As a reminder, when elimination of the annuity supplement was proposed in the House FY 18 budget, NATCA fought against inclusion of the proposal and, in the end, the proposal was not included in the final congressional budget resolution. • NATCA Response: NATCA Government Affairs staff has been discussing the OPM letter and proposals with House leadership, members of Congress, and staff alongside federal employee coalitions. When the White House reportedly asked lawmakers to offer these proposals as amendments during the recent consideration of the FY 19 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bill, NATCA's longstanding and strong bipartisan relationships with both Republicans and Democrats allowed us to quickly kick into action. We contacted a wide range of members on the Armed Services Committee to ensure that they were aware of how these proposed cuts would impact NATCA members and asked those members of Congress to oppose any attempts to act on these cuts. The NLC was also on high alert, working in close collaboration with NATCA Government Affairs, and prepared to act at a moment's notice. In the end, lawmakers on the Armed Services declined to consider such attacks on the workforce. Further, Republicans and Democrats have already started to come out in opposition to the plan. For example, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) sent a letter to OPM urging the Director to rescind the proposal, making the point that taking away retirement benefits from federal employees would make it harder to recruit the next generation, which is an important issue to NATCA as we work to address the current staffing crisis for air traffic controllers. • What should we do? During NIW, NATCAvists met with their members of Congress to bring the OPM letter to their attention, if they hadn't already known about the letter, and voiced their opposition to these proposals. Anti-federal employees will continue to come up within the Administration and Congress, which is why it is important for NATCA to stay engaged. FAA REAUTHORIZATION – NEXT STEPS: The House overwhelmingly passed H.R. 4, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, in April by a vote of 393-13. The five-year, bipartisan bill authorizes $71 billion for the operations, F&E, and RED accounts at the FAA from Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 through FY 2023. On the Senate side, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell officially "started the clock" on H.R. 4, meaning that the bill can come to

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