Chance for 4.1 Percent Raise Remains

The latest action on the budget, while a disappointment to employee organizations and members of Congress who are pushing to set the raise at 4.1 percent retroactive to the beginning of calendar year 2003, leaves open the possibility that the raise will yet be boosted to that number. The House has passed a separate measure that the Senate can use as a vehicle to create a package of the regular appropriations bills that have not yet been passed into law. The intent is to have a House-Senate conference settle the budget for the rest of the current fiscal year, with quick House and Senate floor votes to follow. Since the Senate version of one of the unpassed appropriations bills, the Treasury-Postal measure, specifies a 4.1 percent raise, the hope among backers of a higher raise is that the Senate will include the 4.1 percent figure as part its budget package and that the conferees will accept it. The House last year did pass its version of the Treasury-Postal measure containing a 4.1 percent raise but the Senate never took up its version as Congress hit budgetary gridlock.