Fedweek

Recent attention has put into motion an effort to bar a future executive order converting tens of thousands of federal career positions to political appointments. Image: VegaTews/Shutterstock.com

A key spending bill produced by Democratic leaders in the Senate effectively endorses a 4.6 percent federal employee raise in January and would bar removing civil service protections from competitive service employees involved with policy as the Trump administration attempted with its short-lived excepted service Schedule F.

The general government spending bill from Appropriations Committee leaders takes no position on a federal employee raise, mirroring the silence in a House-passed package of six appropriations bills (HR-8294) including that one. That would pave the way for President Biden to set a raise by default if Congress continues be silent regarding a raise through the end of the calendar year—as it presumably would, since that bill is where a raise number would be set.

In that situation, Presidents almost always go with the figure they proposed in their early-year budget plan, in this case 4.6 percent. A raise of that size likely would be split into across the board and locality components resulting in raises ranging by locality from somewhat below to somewhat above that number. That decision would be made later.

The Senate bill does however specify that political appointees would receive a 4.6 percent raise. That is of interest to federal employees mainly because that in turn would raise the salary caps applying to those in the upper levels of the GS in many localities as well as for senior executives and other career employees at senior pay levels.

The measure further states that a President’s authority to create excepted service categories “shall not include the authority to except from the competitive service positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character that are not positions normally subject to change as a result of a Presidential transition.”

That would target an order that former President Trump issued in October 2020 aimed at essentially moving potentially tens of thousands of competitive service employees with such duties into the excepted service, where competition would not be needed in hiring and the employees would lose competitive service appeal rights and union representation rights.

While President Biden quickly revoked that order after taking office in January 2021 — with no positions having been converted — the issue has drawn new attention lately, resulting in a push to put in law language preventing any such change through only an executive order.

Individuals and policy advocacy groups aligned with Trump have made a revival of such an order a priority in their planning for a future Trump administration—should he run again and win in 2024—or an administration holding similar views. Trump himself underscored that intent in a recent appearance before one such group.

The House appropriations bill does not include language to bar a Schedule F. However, when recently passing its version (HR-7900) of the annual DoD authorization bill, it accepted an amendment to bar any excepted service categories beyond the ones now existing. The Senate version of that bill, which has not yet reached a floor vote, does not have comparable language.

With Congress about to recess until after Labor Day, final resolution of both the pay raise and the language related to a Schedule F will not occur until the fall—and potentially not until late in the year, since Congress plans to recess for all of October until after the elections.

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