On the recordJune 27, 2012
The gentleman from Georgia just wants to freeze everything. But our personnel, in an agency like this, they are subject to the civil service laws, to the personnel laws under OPM, and they are assigned in grades and then steps. They add several steps as they gain seniority and go from step 1 to step 7, and then they may sit for a while. But you end up with people--unless you're really trying to put people out of work. Unless you're trying to put people out of work--and there's no reason to do that for this kind of an agency at all--then there has to be a slow, small increase for those people who move from step to step along the salary scale. So this is an amendment that would essentially cause disruption in the processing and in the personnel system for the agency, which has lots of work to do. We should be worrying about how to get productivity in the processing rather than about trying to jigger and freeze a step system's pay scale for the people who do the work at these agencies. I again urge that this amendment not be adopted, and I yield back the balance of my time.
