act, including data showing the mortality experience of the officers and employees in the service and the rate of withdrawal from such service, and any other information that may serve as a guide for future valuations and adjustments of the plan for the retirement of officers and employees. The Secretary of the Treasury shall make a detailed comparative report annually to Congress showing all receipts and disbursements, together with the total number of persons receiving annuities and the amounts paid them. SEC. 16. That none of the moneys mentioned in this act shall be assignable, either in law or equity, or be subject to execution, levy, or attachment, garnishment, or other legal process; but they shall be liable for the payment of any tax owing the United States or any obligation owing the United States incurred through any breach of duty arising in the course of his employment to the United States by the employee from whose salary such deductions may have been made, or on whose account such annuity may have accrued. SEC. 17. That for clerical and other services and all other expenses necessary in carrying out the provisions of this act, there is hereby appropriated the sum of $100,000, out of my moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, which sum shall be immediately available and continue available until the end of the fiscal year next after the passage of this act; thereafter the Secretary of the Treasury shall include in his annual estimate of appropriations a sum sufficient to continue this act in full force and effect. SEC. 18. That all laws and parts of laws inconsistent with this act are hereby repealed. SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS OF RETIREMENT BILL. Section 1: Classified civil employees covered. Postmasters excluded. Library of Congress and Botanic Garden employees included, except presidential. Executive order may cover in employees not now classified. President may exclude or include employees of intermittent or uncertain tenure. Eligibility for retirement: Service at least 15 years. Age 65 for mechanics, city and rural letter carriers, railway postal clerks. Age 68 for others. Section 2: Deductions, 2 per cent of pay. Withheld from salary appropriations. Transferred on Treasury books to civil service retirement fund. Section 3: Life pension provided: (1) Annuity purchased by deductions. (2) $6 for each year of service, not exceeding 30 years. Section 4: All United States Government service counted (subject to section 8 deduction adjustment if necessary). Military or naval service counted. Compensation for injury received in service of United States conserved to employee. Periods of separation not counted. The substitute postal employees covered credited with only periods of active employment. Section 5: Successive two-year continuances. Upon certification by head of department or branch, at least 90 days prior, of efficiency; and approval by Director of Bureau of War Risk Insurance at least 70 days prior. Ten years after passage of act (or from and after Jan. 1, 1930) absolute age limits 69 and 72. Section 7: Continuance of employment deemed consent to deductions. Return of deductions and payment of pensions to be full acquittance of claims for service. Section 8: Deductions at interest to be made up for credit desired for service for which deductions had not been made. Section 9: Total return to employee or legal representatives in no case less than total deductions accumulated at 4 per cent interest. Secion 10: Appropriation of amounts sufficient to make payments provided for by act. Secretary of the Treasury to invest funds not immediately payable. Section 11: Administration by Director, Bureau War Risk Insurance. Section 12: Payments made by disbursing clerk of Bureau of War Risk Insurance in such form as to protect United States against loss. Section 13. Annuities payable monthly. Section 14: Records of appointments, transfers, separations, nonpay periods, and pay thus lost to employee. Head department or branch to report. Director, Bureau of War Risk Insurance, to record. Section 15: Secretary of Treasury to keep all other needful tables and records for future valuations or adjustments. To report annually to the Congress on conditions of the fund. Section 16: Moneys not assignable or attachable. Section 17: Appropriations for clerical and other services: $100,000 first year, then such sums as necessary. Section 18: Repeal of inconsistent law. MEMORANDUM RE SUGGESTED CHANGES IN THE MCKELLAR-KEATING BILL FOR THE RETIREMENT OF CLASSIFIED CIVIL EMPLOYEES. Section 1: The date substituted presumes passage of the bill before September, 1918. It can be adjusted here and elsewhere in the bill, if necessary, at passage. One hundred and twenty days should intervene, as section 5 requires the employee to make application for retention at least 90 days before arrival at retirement status. Minimum service of 15 years, as well as attainment of specified age, is required for eligibility. The awkward expression "provided: Provided" is avoided in the proposed phraseology. Old section 4 is brought into its logical place as a second paragraph of section 1. Section 2 is old section 8 adapted and brought into its logical place from the standpoint of the modified bill. Section 3: The modified bill, like the original, is devised to cost 5 per cent ultimately, the Government paying half and the employees half, every employee, new or old, paying 23 per cent out of each salary check received after the bill goes into effect. It undertakes to grade the benefits more evenly and more equitably as between employees, providing a gradual increase in the annuity payable, in lieu of the original "step ladder" plan which would encourage the holding over of employees into the next five-year service periods; and returning to the employee, in every case, his own purchase, together with a contribution from the Government that treats alike all persons of like service, except to give proper additional assistance to those employees whose deductions would, on account of the late passage of the bill in their service periods, purchase too small amounts of annuity. The unmodified bill would have granted a pension computed on only the first $1,200 of the 30-year employee's salary, after having withheld deductions based on his whole salary. Instead of 50-50, or anything like it, this would in certain instances compel him to pay the Government-to no advantage of his fellow employees supposed by those advocating the measure-twice the amount of the premium that insurance companies charge for the same benefits, making profits and covering expenses on 79180-18 -6 the business. The bill should do no employee or class of employees such palpable injustice. The 25-year and shorter period employees would suffer the same injustice, only in somewhat lesser degree. The unmodified bill proposes to take 20 long years' more deductions from the 50-year employee than from the 30-year employee, with no increase in the amount of pension. It has been stated by mistaken defenders of this feature that this is just what the insurance companies are doing. Insurance companies charge like premiums for like hazards, a sound economic principle that strict State supervision compels them to observe. Some individuals escape the hazard longer than others, or escape it altogether, and the financial shock that would be suffered by the less fortunate is absorbed by distribution over the whole. The clerk entering at 18 has not the same hazard as the clerk entering at 38. Neither has any hazard at all. In any case they or their estates get back all they put in, and at interest. One knows he will get his pension after 50 years' service and 50 years' contributions. The other knows he will get his pension after 30 years' service and 30 years' contributions. Either the contributions or the pensions, or both, must differ and differ considerably. The insurance carrier that charged the same premium, or that failed to make the equitable difference of premium, would lose its license. Section 4, old section 3, has been modified to conserve to the employee so far as possible any compensation receivable for injury incurred in the service of the United States. Section 5 as modified requires the Director of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance to pass in reasonable season on applications for retention. Section 6 is consistently adjusted. Section 9, old section 11, has been clarified. Certain other modifications have been made which it is believed will facilitate the administration of the bill. The sections following section 7 have been renumbered so as to follow a more logical sequence. A skeleton comparison of average benefits under the original and proposed plans follows. J. D. MADDRILL, Actuary. MECHANICS, CITY AND RURAL CARRIERS, RAILWAY POSTAL CLERKS (ELIGIBLE AT 65). Years of Annual amount of the average pension to be received from retirement (at age 67). Years of tions that will be made MECHANICS, CITY AND RURAL CARRIERS, RAILWAY POSTAL CLERKS (ELIGIBLE AT 65)-Continued. Age at passage of bill or Annual amount of the average pension to be received from retirement (at age 67). By new entrants. OTHER THAN MECHANICS, CITY AND RURAL CARRIERS, RAILWAY POSTAL CLERKS (ELIGIBLE AT 68). Annual amount of the average pension to be received from retirement (at age 70). By those new in service with years of past service at passage be made quent entry. by assumed of bill By new entrants. age of retire 5 ment (70). |