Budget Process to Start Moving

The House is expected to draft over the next several weeks a budget outline that in effect would put a stake in the ground on a variety of issues, including such matters as federal pay and benefits. House leaders have said they will produce a “budget resolution” even though the Senate already has said it won’t write a counterpart on grounds that an earlier budget agreement already set an outline for the upcoming fiscal year. If the House plan is silent regarding the federal pay raise, as last year, that could again clear the way for the White House’s proposed 1 percent raise next January to take effect by default. Also being watched is whether the document will again seek to increase employee contributions toward retirement and to use a less generous inflation index for federal retirement and many other COLA-adjusted programs, since the administration has dropped earlier proposals in those areas. Another common theme of the House plan has been to reduce federal employment by seeking a partial hiring freeze; a signal that it may pursue that idea again came recently when a House Republican offered a bill seeking to reduce the DoD workforce by 15 percent by attrition. There is disagreement even among House Republicans regarding what issues the plan should address and how aggressively it should seek deficit reduction.