House panel pushes military-civilian pay parity

Late Wednesday evening, near the end of a lengthy session to craft the House version of the fiscal 2003 budget resolution, the House Budget Committee agreed to back an amendment calling on Congress to fund equal pay increases for military service members and civilian federal employees next year.

After the panel had voted on a series of other amendments, Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, said he would accept, without debate, a proposal introduced by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., on pay parity.

"Each day our nation's civil servants and uniformed military perform invaluable work for our nation," Moran said before the panel's session. "Both our federal employees and our military personnel are working side-by-side to fight the war on terrorism and strengthen homeland security, and there is no reason that these groups should not be compensated equitably."

In its fiscal 2003 budget, the Bush administration proposed a 4.1 percent military pay raise in January 2003, and a 2.6 percent raise for civilian employees. Federal pay raises are supposed to include an across-the-board increase, based on the change in the Employment Cost Index, and locality-based increases, based on labor costs in 31 metropolitan areas across the country, according to a formula created under the 1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act. Under that formula, the civilian pay raise for 2003 would be 3.1 percent across-the-board, plus locality pay.

Though military and civilian pay increases have been the same for 14 of the last 16 years, the Bush administration does not believe that the two raises should be automatically linked. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels defended the military-civilian pay raise split earlier this year, saying military service members should get more money because they are "in harm's way at time of war."

"Our real challenge is to raise the income of both groups significantly, not to allow one group to fall further behind the other," Moran said.

The House budget resolution is a nonbonding document that even when merged with a corresponding Senate version does not carry the weight of law. The only part of the resolution with teeth is its total dollar figure, which provides a blueprint for appropriators who'll write 13 spending bills later this year.

Nevertheless, said Moran, "with the inclusion of this language in the budget resolution, we will be in a much better position to achieve pay parity for our federal workers."

Last month, Reps. Jim Moran, D-Va., Tom Davis, R-Va., Connie Morella, R-Md., Frank Wolf, R-Va., Albert Wynn, D-Md., Steny Hoyer, D-Md. and Del. Eleanor Holmes, D-D.C., sent a letter to President Bush urging him to endorse military-civilian pay parity in 2003.

Last week Hoyer and Davis introduced a "sense of the Congress" resolution calling for pay parity. The resolution, H. Con. Res. 42, has 80 co-sponsors.

The 2003 budget resolution, which mirrors the budget proposed by President Bush last month, provides for a total of about $759 billion in discretionary spending--$392.7 billion for defense and $366.3 billion for other programs. The plan's total discretionary spending would be almost $50 billion above fiscal 2002.