Congress calls for higher federal pay raise

Federal workers should get a 4.6 percent average pay raise next year rather than President Bush's proposed 3.6 percent raise, lawmakers said late Thursday night. House and Senate negotiators released a fiscal 2002 budget resolution that includes language calling for the higher raise. The language in the budget resolution is not binding, so the President or Congress will have to take additional action to put the higher increase in federal workers' hands next January. "Members of the uniformed services and civilian employees of the United States make significant contributions to the general welfare of the nation," the resolution said. "Increases in the pay of members of the uniformed services and of civilian employees of the United States have not kept pace with increases in the overall pay levels of workers in the private sector, so that there now exists a 32 percent gap between compensation levels of federal civilian employees and compensation levels of private sector workers; and an estimated 10 percent gap between compensation levels of members of the uniformed services and compensation levels of private sector workers." In his budget proposal, Bush called for a 4.6 percent raise for military personnel, but only a 3.6 percent average raise for civilian personnel. The Bush administration said that the civilian raise should be less than the military's because federal employees have recently had a number of enhancements in benefits, including health insurance premiums paid on a pre-tax basis, a new long-term care insurance program and reduced payroll deductions for their pension funds. Some federal employees noted that the 1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act, if it were followed, would require a much higher raise than 4.6 percent in 2002 because President Clinton raised federal pay at lower rates than the law called for over the past eight years. The law was intended to close the alleged gap between federal and private-sector wages over a decade. But the Clinton administration questioned the methodology that calculated the gap. If the law were followed in 2002, federal employees could receive a double-digit pay raise. Regardless of the 1990 law, civilians and military personnel have received the same raise in 17 of the last 20 years. The House and Senate are scheduled to approve the budget resolution early next week. Then either the Bush administration would have to order the higher raise or Congress would have to force Bush's hand by including a mandate for a higher raise in a piece of legislation. In the past, Congress has used the Treasury-Postal appropriations act as the vehicle for setting federal pay raises.