Once upon a Furlough ...

Well, it finally happened, after 33 years of Federal employment ... My first Adverse Action.  A furlough, a source of months of speculation, hanging out there like a piece of space rock that you know is screaming (maybe more like meandering) towards you; yet you're not quite sure if or when it might hit, or how big the mess will be if it does.

"It" appears to be hitting, regardless of my own personal opinions, long expressed (denial perhaps?) that there was no way they would allow this chunk of space junk to impact.

And of course, the story gets much uglier the further you peal the onion.

My first attempt at writing this, the day after we received our Notice of Proposed Furlough, came off like an angry rant ... which it surely was.  

I blame both sides for their blatant disregard for the very Middle Class voters they do battle over every day in the daily media. But the biggest chunk of anger I feel is towards The White House ...

That last part won't surprise anyone who has read my posts on the orchestrated financial crises such as the Fiscal Cliff and Sequestration.  In this case, I reserve a  special animosity for those who created the sequestration gamble with the livelihoods of working class Americans!

But yes, I feel a little better today, thank you.  Still more than a little ... uh ... annoyed however.

The reason is summarized somewhat by today's title, "Once upon a Furlough ...", a twist on a phrase used by story-tellers as early 1380.  Afterall, sequestration with all its head-scratching "cost savers" - among them the furlough of federal employees - is great big Fairy Tale.  And the story has its origins in The Oval Office during the 2011 debt-ceiling negotiations.

At that time The White House was working with the Democrat's Congressional delegation, trying to figure a way to wheedle agreement from the Republican side of The House to raise the federal debt limit.  It was then Chief-of-Staff Jack Lew (now Treasury Secretary) and White House Congressional liaison Rob Nabors who "brain stormed" The Great Sequestration Gamble of 2013.

The idea being that the sequestration would be such a painful penalty for not agreeing to a future "grand bargain" on the budget and deficit, and more importantly on what - if any - cuts could be made to said budget, and who and how much more in taxes would be paid.  The political pain was aimed squarely at the Republicans, betting that the politics of the situation would force the Republican's hand at a crucial moment.

Like much of what this Adminstration does, it was a poorly developed gamble that was just as shoddily executed, minus any form of Presidential Leadership, and with no fall back position other than to blame the whole mess on the Republicans in Congress.

Problem is the ploy required building sufficient political pressure to force Republicans to seek a deal.  But once again, The White House fumbled the ball, never quite able to sell yet another policy position sufficiently enough to build even passing interest. 

The Republicans recognized the true lay of the land and refused to yield on earlier commitments to taxpayers; holding the Democrats and The White House to their promise of significant budget cuts without more in tax revenue than Congress accepted to avoid the other contrived 2013 budget trigger - the New Year's fiscal cliff .

"Ruh Roh!", as Scooby Doo was fond of saying.

Of course no Leadership emerged ... only insistence that more tax revenue was the solution and a lot of political rallies disguised as "taking the argument to the people".

"Ruh roh ..."

And when the time came for dramatic action to cut the heart out of their Sequestration creation, The White House instead decided to double down on the political stakes.  It came with the none-too-subtle message to the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives, "Refuse to surrender, and the Country will suffer!"

"Ruh roh ..."

That's how we ended up with the silly cancellation of White House tours, hand-wringing over Easter egg hunts, contrived air travel delays, and accusations that every unfortunate event from a bridge collapse to the bombings in Boston were the result of the sequestration.

Yet as I outlined earlier this year, the actual affect of sequestration on the 2013 fiscal budget was just 1% of everything the federal government will spend in Fiscal Year 2013.

A penny on every dollar!

And still, here we are.

For federal employees of the U.S. Navy, the sequester furloughs are particularly infuriating because they are completely unnecessary!  Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus and other senior Navy executive leaders have made it known that the U.S. Navy could comfortably absorb the sequestration-driven budget cuts without a single civilian furlough.

The response from White House Cabinet DoD Secretary Chuck Hagel?  Yet another absence of Leadership ... Insisting that the Navy furlough it's civilian workforce in order to "be fair" to those who work for the Army and Air Force.

Yep, that's right  ... Fairness is the real reason for the furloughs of Navy employees as opposed to "the extraordinary and serious budget challenges facing the Department of Defense" as my misleading furlough notice states.

DoD has every indication that the Navy can absorb its share of the shared pain from this silly sequestration without affecting the incomes of its civilian employees; yet they insist the Navy reduce their employees annual earnings by 20% in order to "be fair" to those civilians employed by the other military services!

Once upon a time ...

So what's a Federal Employee to do?!? 

One of the protections, federal employees enjoy is that of the Merit System Protection Board.  The MSPB is expecting a potential tsunami of appeals over the furloughs being forced on federal employees.  Since an appeal to the MSPB can cost the Government up to $10,000 (See "Cost of Appeals"), the Federal Government desperate for a way to stay within budget and sacrificing its employees, ends up potentially paying twice as much as it expects to save for each employee who decides to file an MSPB appeal.

For Navy employees in particular, Chuck Hagel has laid a very nice gift at your feet.

You can view instructions and a link to the appeal process here.  MSPB even has an e-file application to ease the confusion.  Furloughed employees have 30 days from the date-of-notice or from the first day-of-furlough, whichever is later, to file their MSPB appeals.

There ... now I feel much better!