The House Appropriations Committee, in approving the fiscal 2005 Transportation-Treasury spending bill, has advocated a 3.5 percent increase in the name of maintaining parity with raises for military personnel, a practice that Congress has followed in all but a few of the last 20 years. The measure does not specify how the raise would be split between across-the-board and locality pay; that issue likely will be decided by presidential order. The bill also would guarantee that wage grade employees, who are under a separate locality system, would get at least the same increase paid to GS employees in a given area, and that employees of the Homeland Security and Defense Departments