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Once again, Congress has found an easy punching bag to pretend it is doing something about federal spending: the very workers who keep this country running. In the latest proposal marked for a House Oversight Committee vote on April 30, lawmakers are advancing a disgraceful plan that would gut federal benefits for new hires, forcing them to choose between working at-will without job protections or accepting severely reduced benefits. Either they give up basic employment protections, or they accept a future with dramatically weakened retirement security. Congress is also pushing to change how federal retirement is calculated, moving from the current high-3 salary average to a high-5. This technical-sounding tweak is a calculated assault on workers’ futures. By stretching the average over five years instead of three, federal employees will retire with substantially smaller pensions. For many, this means losing tens of thousands of dollars over the course of their retirement, a slow bleed designed to go unnoticed until it is too late. And for what These so-called savings of 50 billion are almost laughably small compared to the overall federal budget. Gutting federal workers’ retirements would save pennies, fractions of a percent, in a multi-trillion dollar budget. Yet for the individual worker, these cuts would wreak havoc on financial security, housing stability, healthcare, and dignity in retirement. Elon Musk has 38 billion in federal government contracts which is almost the entire amount that will have devastating effects on employees. He has hundreds of billions of dollars and is just one person. The tax plan benefits multi billionaires at the expense of regular Americans for a pittance of the budget. This proposal is not about fiscal responsibility. It is about ideology, a deliberate attempt to demonize federal workers and dismantle the federal workforce by making public service an unbearable career option. Federal workers are the people who protect our food, investigate crimes, manage disasters, ensure safe air travel, and deliver healthcare to veterans. Their pay and benefits are not luxuries. Instead of looking at billion-dollar tax loopholes, outrageous defense waste, or corporate subsidies, Congress has decided to pinch pennies out of the pensions of rank-and-file government employees. It is an insult to every American who depends on effective government services, which is to say, every single one of us. If these proposals pass, they will cripple recruitment and demoralize the workforce. Why would the next generation of talented Americans sign up for public service when Congress is making it crystal clear that their careers and futures are expendable Please abandon this short-sighted, shameful assault on federal employees before irreversible damage is done not just to the workers themselves, but to the essential services that Americans count on every single day.