The House has passed the first two of the appropriations bills for fiscal 2014, which are neutral on the issue of a federal raise in January; other spending bills are starting to move through the pipeline. The bills take the position that if a raise is to be paid, it would have be absorbed from general salaries and expenses accounts. That approach has been used commonly over the years to allow a federal raise without adding to agency budgets. But those accounts already are squeezed by sequestration and it’s unclear how agencies would find the funds needed to pay a raise even of the 1 percent the White House has recommended. Meanwhile, the House plans to vote this week on the annual DoD authorization bill that among other things would deny the Pentagon’s request for another round of base closings and would set the 2014 military raise at 1.8 percent; the White House has requested 1 percent for both civilian and military personnel. The appropriations bill covering DoD also would provide a 1.8 percent military raise. In many past years, planning for a higher military raise at this point in the process provided an opening to boost the civilian raise up to that level in the name of pay parity, but that practice hasn’t been followed in more recent years.
