ECI Used as Starting Point

In recent years the ECI figure alone has effectively become the starting point for annual raise deliberations, and locality pay has been carved out of the total amount enacted. For example, the Bush administration in its budget proposal earlier this year recommended both federal and military raises for 2007 of 2.2 percent, which was the unadjusted ECI figure for the pertinent measuring period for that raise. For several years, a law mandating that military personnel get a half percentage point above the ECI number helped pull federal raises up to that amount in the name of pay parity. But that law is now expired, and Congress did not keep to that formula in this year’s budget process for setting the military raise, instead accepting the 2.2 percent number for uniformed personnel.