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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers said today she is very disappointed to find that once again the failure of Congress to raise the national debt limit in a timely manner has resulted in a raid on the pension fund of federal employees.

“Federal workers deserve more respect than to have their earned pension account used as a rainy day fund by the federal government,” President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said in a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Senate Majority Leader William Frist (R-TN).

She urged Congress to promptly raise the debt ceiling and “stop borrowing” from the federal Thrift Savings Program (TSP).

Treasury Secretary John Snow has informed Congress that the government is unable to pay its bill and thus has suspended contributions and reinvestments to TSP G Fund—a step it has found it necessary to take a number of times in recent years. While Congress “has been aware of the need to raise the debt limit since last year,” Kelley said, it “has failed to act.”

She added: “No private sector employer would ever be allowed to do this. Congress has a responsibility to balance revenue and expenditure and, when it cannot, issue notes and bonds to finance the debt. It is not appropriate to use federal employees’ retirement fund for general government expenses.”

Under federal law, the government is required to make the G fund whole for all contributions and interest lost during the period of the diversion.

But even after that is done, President Kelley said, “federal workers are left with an uneasy feeling of concern about having money they are counting on for their retirement being used for another purpose. That is not how a well-run enterprise—and that is exactly what the federal government needs to be—should operate.”

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments.