Welcome to the 112th Congress

As an old Hill staffer this is always a special time, every two year's the world, at least the world of the U.S. House of Representatives is born anew and anything is possible.

This group, however, face issues and demands that are far greater than any of their more recent predecessors. I am reminded of my time on the old Committee on Post Office and Civil Service in the early-1980's when recruiting Members of Congress to serve on this Committee was getting harder. The Committee had oversight of the U.S. Postal Service and all Federal employee matters including their pay, retirement and other benefits.

When encouraged to join Members often responded, "why should I get on that Committee and make every Federal employee and retiree unhappy with me? The good (read easy) things have already been done, there's nothing left to be done but to begin to take things away to meet the new Budget demands." And they were right.

Shortly, thereafter the Congress ended the old federal retirement system and replaced it with one more like the private sector and heavily dependent on a 401k like portion based on the employee's willingness to contribute funds to it. It also ended Federal retirees who also had Social Security coverage from prior career work from receiving their full retirement income from both systems and similarly, Federal retirees could no longer receive Social Security benefits based on an spouse's Social Security earnings, when that spouse dies.

So, good luck to the new Congress, the easy stuff has been done, but then again, if the issues were easy, the Country wouldn't be in this situation.