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As the president prepares to deliver his State of the Union address tonight, I would urge him to consider the state of our nation’s federal workforce. These 1.8 million dedicated federal employees contribute a great deal to the strength of our country and the ability of the federal government to deliver needed services to our citizens. Yet this administration has continuously shown a disregard for their contributions. The fact is that morale is dangerously low among employees in all federal agencies including those who work at the front lines of our homeland security, those who protect our food and drugs, those who guard our nation’s financial industries, and those who collect our country’s revenues. That is not surprising, of course, in the wake of continuing administration efforts to turn federal jobs over to the private sector; attempts to strip federal employees of many of their vital civil service rights; the unwillingness, year after year, to provide federal agencies with adequate resources or workers with a fair pay raise. These actions reverberate far beyond the federal workforce and hurt our country. Clearly, the state of our nation would improve significantly if federal employees received the respect they earn every day by their performance—and if their agencies were appropriately funded so they could accomplish their missions of service to the public.