We asked:

What was your reaction to news that the pay freeze has been extended? If you could have spoken at the Republican and Democratic conventions, what would you have said?

You said:

The problem with a pay freeze is, for those of us in the middle class, we keep falling further and further behind, when the cost of fuel, college tuition and insurance (car, medical & homeowners) keeps going up. It is difficult to save any money, when you are now living pay check to pay check.

— Terry Hunter

Department of Defense

Yorktown, Va.

I am planning on a FERS retirement (Federal Employees Retirement System) in May 2013. My “high 3” will be the same as my “last 1.” Having a pay freeze for the final three years of my federal career will cost me approximately $2,400 a year/a couple of hundred dollars a month, in my federal pension for the rest of my life. Retirement was always going to be a shoestring affair for me. It will now be a broken shoestring.

— Rodney Hubbard

EPA’s Solid and

Hazardous Waste Program

While I will most likely vote for them, I am extremely disappointed in the lack of support from the Obama administration and the Democrats more generally.

I had hoped the President and the Democrats would push through the 0.5 percent cost of living increase in January 2013. It has been more than two years since we received a cost of living increase. Though not all federal employees live in the greater Washington area, this is a very expensive area to live in, particularly if one wants to live within a reasonable commuting distance.

The Department of Commerce employees alone handle everything from patents to industrial standards and weather service. Employees in other agencies handle food inspections, the safety of pharmaceuticals, and Social Security to name a select few.

I suspect that most American citizens want to have a safe food supply and safe medicines as well as access to Social Security. While there are many inefficiencies in the way our government is run, the civil service federal employees who work hard to provide services to individuals and companies should not be blamed for inefficiencies or deficiencies in the way the government is run, particularly at this time when we are trying to support our missions with fewer resources.

— Jacqueline Arrowsmith

U.S. Department of Commerce

Bethesda

My initial comment regarding the extension of the freeze on federal pay is too bad the individuals in Congress who feel a need to continue to use federal employees to make their point can’t freeze the cost of gas, food, insurance, medicine and other basic necessities of life.

— Mirinda Jackson

Retired federal employee

Accokeek