7/24/09: Yesterday, on July 23, 2009, the Senate passed its version of the Department of Defense Authorization Bill (S. 1390) for Fiscal Year 2010 in a vote of 87-7. The measure did not include the Akaka amendment that would have added most of the provisions NTEU reported on earlier that were included in the House DOD bill. These provisions would allow unused FERS sick leave to be counted toward the retirement calculation as is done for CSRS employees; fix the CSRS part-time anomaly so those who choose to go part-time at the end of their careers will have their pensions calculated correctly; allow the FERS redeposit changes; and allow those federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii, and U.S. territories to participate in locality pay like other federal employees do.

Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) had prepared an amendment to the DOD authorization bill to add these to the Senate version, but the amendment became enmeshed in a Senate filibuster led by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) who spoke vehemently against “providing additional benefits” to the federal workforce. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) also spoke against the Akaka amendment. The amendment was ultimately withdrawn so that the DOD bill could be voted on.

While NTEU is disappointed with this development, we were able to get these provisions included in the House DOD Authorization bill (H.R. 2647) as reported earlier. We will now work to retain them in the House-Senate Conference Committee which will meet to reconcile differences between the two versions of the DOD bill.