I remember a couple departments (including the NSA) complaining about the federal cap when it came to some IT projects, so I'm not sure it is a sure deal to get past that cap.
The VA is a whole other land of bureaucracy that plays by its own rules.
The VA is a whole other land of bureaucracy that plays by its own rules.
That's separate from the discussion of what these perverse incentives (eg. pay more to mercenaries than to lifelong government servants) do to morale, capabilities, and institutional knowledge. It gets far worse when the president casually says that we should just fire emergency specialists and suggest we can hire them back on short notice in the middle of an emergency.
I guess my point above is that feds can fix this if they truly wanted to. There's precedent for them hiring people for far more money than the regular GS rate when they need to. It would be impossible to hire a surgeon for $160k, but they need them, so they pay more. At the moment, the government doesn't feel they need to pay more, so they don't. I hope someday that will change and think it's important to educate and lobby the federal government to help them understand this and change their policy.