The Office of Personnel Management has a conduit for funding labor union PACs.
James Madison famously said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” They are not, and so we need government. A corollary might be “if federal employees were angels, there wouldn’t be so many laws and regulations on the books designed to keep government officials from using their positions to advance the interests of political parties.”
For example, if one uses their job for expressly partisan purposes, that federal employee might be facing a Hatch Act violation. In egregious cases, there might be ethics sanctions or even criminal penalties. However, what would happen if the government were allowed to help partisan political organizations with their fundraising?
Surely that would never happen, right? Sadly, that is exactly what is happening in the federal retirement system.
Federal retirees can go into their account in the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) retirement portal and choose “organizational allotments.” There is an approved list of organizations to which retirees can direct a portion of their pensions to be transferred automatically to these organizations, presumably of which the retiree is a member. Interestingly, the page says, “Are you a member of this organization? If not, the organization may refund this donation.” They “may?” That implies the organization may not refund it.
And what are these organizations blessed with OPM’s approval? The EPA’s Karaoke Club? The Department of Education’s Employee Book Club? No. All but one of the organizations is affiliated with government unions. Eight of them are openly political action committees (PACs), while two of the others have associated PACs.
From campaign data for the 2024 election cycle, those PACs and organizations with PACs allocated 76 percent of their political spending to Democrats. Only one of them on the list, the National Association of Postmasters of the United States PAC, supported Republicans (57 percent of their spending) over Democrats (43 percent), reversing its historic spending in 2024 for the first time since 1990, according to the data. All the others leaned heavily towards favoring Democrats. To show some numbers, the Treasury Employees Political Action Committee spent 96 percent on Democrats, and the American Federation of Government Employees PAC spent 94 percent on Democrats. The Federal Managers Association PAC favored Democrats, with 55 percent of their spending, and all the rest on the list were spending 60+ percent on Democrats.
So, OPM is directly assisting in fundraising that overwhelmingly supports one side of the aisle. Even if it were balanced, why is OPM serving as a fundraising vendor for any partisan organization?
One may argue that it’s no big deal, as these “organizational allotments” are merely allowing retirees to direct some of their own pension to organizations they support. However, they are clearly being subsidized both by setting up the convenience of automatic transfers and by OPM incurring transaction costs. Why can’t the supporters of these overtly partisan organizations just donate to them without government involvement? I’m pretty sure they take checks and probably even automatic, recurring donations.
Even if OPM attempts to recover costs from the receiving organization, which the regulations appear to allow, there is still an implicit subsidy. The partisan PACs do not have to spend any effort or money on outreach to these donors, since OPM is taking care of that for them.
The automatic transfer is a sweet deal for the PACs, receiving regular cash infusions in seemingly perpetuity. For the retiree, it’s probably like that old streaming subscription you may never use but keep paying for because you forget about it. Once an automatic transfer is set, the partisan organization has a locked-in donor who probably will just set it and forget it, arranged by taxpayers.
But really, it doesn’t matter even if the costs to OPM are zero. It’s outrageous that such a system from the government exists for such blatant partisan fundraising. While the government is obligated to pay its retirees’ pensions, the retirees themselves should also be obligated to make their own political donations.
The federal government is an instrument of the people. Every four years, voters decide who controls that instrument, but the instrument itself is supposed to be treating everyone equally under the law and not skewing systems to benefit anyone’s preferences in partisan politics. This “organizational allotment” system is counter to that longstanding, constitutional arrangement, and both OPM and Congress should review this partisan, political setup.