Feds are well-paid

[Regarding "Congress to give feds 2010 locality pay," FedLine, Dec. 8:]

I'm a long-term civil servant, with salary capped a long time ago, and planning on working another 10 to 15 years for the government.

If you can't move to the private sector at any time in your government career, you have a problem that pay scales can't solve.

If you are nearing retirement, or capped, and you are just now understanding the limits to your earnings when you are at this point, you have not planned very well.

The basic pay system is not going to change substantially, and you will not find anyone outside of government who has much sympathy for our concerns about cost-of-living increases and salary caps.

We make more money than most Americans.

You have to decide what you are doing in government. If it is for the pay, and you don't have options to move up or out, you don't have much to look forward to from the federal pay system.

Every year I have been in the civil service, I have read about the projected exodus of retirees. It never happens, but when slightly-larger-than-normal numbers leave, it makes little difference in government operations. There are many applications for most senior civil service job vacancies. Many qualified people want our jobs, and will be glad to start at lower salaries. It is probably unrealistic to conclude that you work harder than the average American, or can't be replaced fairly easily.

Time to face the facts, folks. We serve by choice, and are paid well by our countrymen. There is no grassroots or congressional effort to change our pay, the fundamental process in which it is administered, or when it is adjusted for cost of living.

False security

After the Christmas bomber, the president called for a review of air safety. Just once, can we implement proper safeguards before a terrorist incident and not after one?

Our security measures against a bioterrorist attack must be reviewed now, for all they have managed so far is to change the terrorists' choice of target and their choice of weapon. All that Americans have been given is a false sense of security. A review of our level of security against a bioterrorist attack will find basic and simple safeguards overlooked, not realized, assumed or merely recommended where requirements are warranted.

Just once, know that we are not invincible, review all our enemies' capabilities and lower the level of threat.