Fedweek

While the Treasury-Postal measure commonly is one of the earlier appropriations bills to move, this year neither the House nor the Senate has even started working on it yet. Last year employee-friendly members of Congress attached language to that bill to set the January 2000 raise at 4.8 percent after there were indications that the raise might slip down to 4.4 percent. This year many of those same members are aiming for a 4.2 percent increase in January 2001. However, their task this time around will be more difficult because that almost certainly would require paying a raise to civilian federal employees above what the military will get; last year the task was merely to keep employees apace with the military raise.