Key Bill Leaves Room for Raise

Both the House and Senate versions of a key spending bill leave room for a federal employee raise in January 2015 while not naming a figure—effectively an endorsement of 1 percent. A Senate subcommittee approved its financial services-general government bill Tuesday and the full House Appropriations Committee is set to take up its version today. If Congress remains silent regarding a figure through the end of the year, a raise would take effect automatically as it did for this year’s raise. As happened last year, the White House has recommended 1 percent across the board, a figure that likely would be repeated in an order to be issued in August, officially setting that amount to be paid by default. While details of the Senate plan haven’t been released, a summary states that it “does not contradict the President’s proposal.” The House measure meanwhile states that political appointees at the SES level and above would have their actual pay frozen, even if their rates, which are used to set pay caps for other federal employees, go up; that also would be a repeat. The House previously passed a separate bill denying a raise for Congress next year, while it has approved 1.8 percent for the military, whose raise acted as the marker for many years – although not in more recent ones — for federal employee raises in the name of pay parity.