Pay Picture Still Unclear

While both the House and Senate have addressed the issue of the military pay raise for January 2004, the raise for federal employees is still to be determined. The Bush administration recommendation is to give federal employees a 2 percent across-the-board raise in January 2004 and to create a $500 million fund to reward good performers. The House has approved a Defense Department spending bill (HR-1588) that endorses the performance fund and that says parity between military and federal employee raises should be maintained “to the maximum extent practicable.” A budget outline for the upcoming fiscal year approved in April similarly favored maintaining parity between the military and civilian raises in 2004. However, it’s unclear what effect approval of a performance fund would have on pay parity-that is, whether the performance fund would be added on top of a “parity” raise or whether the money for the fund would be carved out of the money otherwise available for a federal raise.