The new budget agreement between the White House and congressional leaders could relieve several pressures on federal employee pay and benefits as well as the threat of another partial government shutdown in the fall.
The agreement would allow for spending in the next two fiscal years well above the limits set in an earlier budget law. Those limits had been a major barrier to enacting agency spending in time for the October 1 start of the new fiscal year; an attempt to stay within them could have triggered a move to find savings in programs such as federal retirement and health insurance. The agreement also would lift another threat that could have hit around the same time by suspending the federal debt ceiling through July 2021.
The House hopes to vote on the plan later this week with the Senate potentially to follow next week, after which Congress would be in recess through Labor Day. Approval is not guaranteed, however.
Concerns about another shutdown had been growing as Congress made only limited progress on the regular appropriations bills for fiscal year 2020. The House has passed 10 of the 12 but the Senate has passed none. Among those passed by the House is the general government measure (HR-3351) that provides for an average 3.1 percent federal employee raise in January; raising the amount of money available in general could improve chances of that raise being enacted despite the White House’s call for a freeze.
A higher topline amount for defense spending also could speed consideration of the annual DoD authorization bill, differing versions of which (HR-2500, S-1790) have already passed the House and Senate. Those bills, which contain a number of provisions affecting federal employment policies government-wide, could now be on track to be signed into law before October 1.
However, agreement on funding levels still leaves many policy differences to be resolved. The House general government spending bill for example would stop the breakup of OPM and would bar agencies from unilaterally changing the terms of negotiated contracts. Also, its version of the defense bill would return the standard probationary period at DoD from two years to the one year applying elsewhere and also pave the way for repealing special RIF policies applying there that make performance the top retention factor. That bill also would convert the maximum 12 annual weeks of leave for parental and other family purposes from unpaid to paid time for federal employees.
The agreement does call for some offsetting spending cuts; any such move raises concerns that federal employee pay and benefits will be targeted. However, the only cuts specified involve extending several spending restrictions in Medicare and some customs fees currently set to expire.
