Bush proposes 1.5 percent pay raise for federal workers in 2005

President Bush's fiscal 2005 budget proposal includes a 1.5 percent pay increase for civilian workers and a 3.5 percent pay boost for military personnel, according to budget documents released Monday.

The proposed pay raises rebuff calls for military-civilian pay parity from several lawmakers. Last week six senators sent a letter to Bush seeking equal civilian and military pay raises in the fiscal 2005 budget proposal. Washington-area House lawmakers plan to introduce a "Sense of Congress" resolution on the issue in early February.

Leading lawmakers from both parties indicated Monday that they will push to override the White House proposal.

"Civilian federal employees, from scientists at the Centers for Disease Control to CIA agents to border patrol agents, are a dedicated group of Americans who spend every day at work serving their country," said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. "I will fight for the principle of pay parity to provide them with a fair pay adjustment in 2005."

A similar situation arose during last year's budget planning, when Bush's fiscal 2004 proposal included a 4.1 percent raise for military personnel but a only a 2 percent increase for civilians. Congress overruled Bush and granted a 4.1 percent pay boosts to military and civilian federal workers in the fiscal 2004 omnibus measure.

In his radio address Saturday, Bush said that in this budget, "Americans will see my priorities clearly at work." Bush said military pay raises were connected to ongoing U.S. military commitments abroad. He did not, however, mention pay boosts for civil servants or the issue of pay parity.

"Since I took office, we have increased pay for our men and women in uniform by 21 percent," Bush said. "Next year, I propose raising their pay by another 3.5 percent. Our troops put their lives on the line to defend America, and we owe them our best in return."

Federal labor unions decried the proposed pay raise.

"The message that federal employees get from this president…is that they are not as important, that they are not valued and that their work is somehow less important than that of their uniformed counterparts," said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. "That is where the real damage is done."

"We've come to expect very little from this president when it comes to compensation for federal employees," said Jacque Simon, public policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 federal employees.

Confronted with the 2 percent disparity between military and civil servant pay raises, budget officials touted the Human Capital Performance Fund, which was allotted $300 million in the fiscal 2005 budget proposal. Federal managers would be able to use money from that fund to raise the salaries of their most outstanding employees. When it proposed creating the fund in the fiscal 2004 budget, the White House asked for $500 million. The fund was created, but Congress allotted it only $2.5 million.

"The typical feature in most businesses is you pay people more who are performing well. We should not have a civil service system where everybody just gets a big or even moderately sized automatic increase," said Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Any pay boost beyond the anticipated rate of inflation, he said, should be awarded to federal employees "who are working real hard, performing terrifically."

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, believes that the Human Capital Performance Fund has an improved chance of receiving substantial funding from Congress this year, his spokesman said.

"We certainly think there is a general awareness in Congress of the need to institute a culture of achievement throughout the federal workforce," said Davis' spokesman, David Marin.

Davis will also push for pay parity in fiscal 2005, according to Marin.