White House Opposes Pay Parity Language

The Bush administration has stated its opposition to several features of the DoD authorization bills, including the pay parity language. Said a statement: “Civilian and military pay linkage is not necessary. The administration proposed a 2 percent pay raise for all civilian employees, which is very generous at this time when many in the private sector are unemployed or facing shrinking paychecks. The administration has proposed a human capital performance fund to finance higher pay raises for high-performing federal employees. DoD has different recruiting and retention needs for each group, and recent civilian pay raises have exceeded the rate of inflation. The administration is particularly concerned that these additional civilian pay increases are unfunded (costing DoD about $660 million and government-wide about $2.1 billion if so applied).”