By taking no position on a raise, the measure effectively endorses President Biden’s proposal for a 2 percent increase in January. Image: William Sawalich/Shutterstock.com
The House has released the first draft of the key annual appropriations bill for federal employee issues, a measure that is silent regarding a 2025 raise, as that chamber begins what promises to be a contentious process for funding federal agencies past September.
The House Appropriations Committee is set to vote this week at the subcommittee level and then next week at the full committee level on the financial services-general government measure, with a House floor vote possible within weeks later.
By taking no position on a raise, the measure effectively endorses President Biden’s proposal for a 2 percent increase in January. That would follow the practice of most recent years of allowing the recommendation to take effect by default, and would result in the smallest raise since the 1 percent paid in January 2021. The measure however does continue longstanding language tying raises for wage grade employees to those of GS employees in an area, even though the two pay systems operate under separate locality-based rules.
Amendments could be offered in the upcoming voting seeking to set a raise, potentially the 4.5 percent that Biden recommended for military personnel in the name of “pay parity”—another common practice, though an informal one. The House Armed Services Committee already has approved a bill endorsing that figure for most military personnel, with lower-level personnel to receive additional boosts.
The general government measure is one of a dozen spending bills for the fiscal year that begins in October. While House leaders hope to have all the measures passed through that chamber by then—if not by the recess covering August through early September—the Senate so far has not unveiled any of its bills.
Already there is a general expectation that stopgap funding will be needed to carry agencies into early November, with Congress to go on another long recess starting in late September until after the elections.
One reason is that several of the House measures unveiled so far would fund agencies at levels below the administration’s request, and in some cases below current spending levels. The general government bill and the bill covering the State Department and related agencies each would set spending about 10 percent below current levels and 20 percent below the request. Cuts of that magnitude could trigger agency responses such as hiring freezes and even furloughs and RIFs.
The bills covering DoD and DHS would boost spending for those agencies, but they like the other measures contain a number of policy provisions opposed by the White House.
An early sign of the difficulties that lie ahead arose this week when the administration threatened to veto the first bill the House is calling to the floor, covering the VA and military construction projects, because of policy riders. That bill often is among the earliest to move because it traditionally has drawn the strongest bipartisan support.
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How Do Age and Years of Service Impact My Federal Retirement
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