Improved Pay for Reservists Idea Dropped

Congress has dropped, apparently at least for the year, a proposal that would continue paying federal employees their full salaries when they are activated for military duty. As part of the supplemental spending bill for operations in Iraq, the Senate had adopted the provision but it was dropped in the conference with the House on grounds that the committees responsible for reviewing the proposal had not first taken it up. About 120,000 federal employees are members of Reserve or Guard units and are subject to mobilization and in many cases their military pay is far below what they receive for the civilian federal employment. An estimated 14,000 of them currently are mobilized.