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Washington, D.C.—In testimony today, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees offered some stark advice to a Senate subcommittee examining the low state of morale among the federal workforce.

“Wherever I go, my members talk to me about how difficult it has become to accomplish the tasks required of them,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). “The number one problem is there are not enough employees to do the work that needs to be done…Employees are asked to do more and more with less and less.”

The NTEU president made these comments in testimony to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Federal Programs and the Federal Workforce.

Inadequate staff is a problem across government, she said. “Employees leave and no one replaces them,” she said—noting the loss of 10,000 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees in the past four years. “The work didn’t decrease. If anything, it has increased.”

The loss of personnel and the ripple effects it causes, including the inability of agencies to fill those positions due to lack of funds “severely affects the morale of the civil service,” she told senators.

She laid much of the blame for low federal employee morale on Congress, noting that even though federal workers have contributed $138 billion toward deficit reduction, the House approved a fiscal 2015 budget calling for $125 billion more in cuts for that workforce.

The three-year pay freeze and continuing and significant increases in federal employee contributions to their pensions are part of the problem, Kelley said. “This kind of assault contributes to the low morale in the federal workforce.”

NTEU believes, President Kelley said, that the 1 percent pay increase proposed in the administration’s budget is insufficient. “We have recommended that Congress pass a 3.3 percent pay raise,” she said.

Noting that new hires are now paying 4.4 percent of their paychecks toward the Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS), “the recent increases in employee contributions for the modest pension offered through FERS must be reversed,” she said.

Still, Kelley saved her strongest criticism for the continuation of sequestration.

“Unless the sequester is ended,” she told the subcommittee, “it will have a crushing impact on jobs and economic growth, and will cripple the ability of the government to deliver services to the American public.”

She examined some of the more draconian effects of sequestration on the IRS and taxpayers as well as on the ability of Customs and Border Protection to protect the nation’s borders at air, land and sea ports of entry and to facilitate the trade so critical to the nation’s economy.

“If Congress wants an efficient and effective government, it needs to end the sequester and provide adequate resources for personnel and training,” Kelley added.

The NTEU leader pointed to the costly 16-day government shutdown, which disrupted operations across government, as a clear message to federal employees “that Congress does not place importance on the work that they do.”

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.