12 pages. "Under the terms of the Federal Employees' Pay Comparability Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-509), pay for civilian federal employees is adjusted each year to keep the salaries of federal workers competitive with comparable occupations in the private sector.... Congress has linked COLAs for Social Security and federal employee pensions to the rate of increase in the general level of prices.... COLAs ensure that a retiree's income will purchase the same amount of goods and services after years of retirement that it purchased at the start of retirement. COLAs do not reflect increases in the productivity of people who are still in the work force, and thus they do not increase the real purchasing power of retirement income. COLAs do not make retirees better off financially; they merely protect them from becoming financially worse-off over time as prices rise." [Report 94-971, updated Jan. 8, 2008]

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