House to take up pay parity resolution

House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., is confident his colleagues will vote next week to support equal pay adjustments for military and civilian federal employees in 2005, his spokesman said Friday.

As part of a deal with the House Republican leadership, Davis will likely introduce a resolution early next week to support pay parity language in the fiscal 2005 budget. As part of the arrangement, Davis voted Thursday for a House budget resolution that does not include pay parity language.

Although the pay parity resolution would not be binding and would only express the sense of the Congress, supporters believe a successful vote will pave the way for future inclusion of equal pay adjustments.

"We're feeling pretty optimistic," said Davis spokesman David Marin.

A bipartisan roster of lawmakers has been pushing for equal pay raises and attempting to include them in the House and Senate budget resolutions, which guide the appropriations process. The White House has opposed the pay parity effort. President Bush proposed a 3.5 percent average raise for uniformed military personnel and a 1.5 percent average raise for federal civilian workers in his fiscal 2005 budget proposal. Bush has said service members deserve larger raises because overseas deployments have put them in harm's way.

In his fiscal 2004 budget proposal, Bush also proposed different increases for the military and the civil service, but Congress granted all federal employees a 4.1 percent average pay raise.

Earlier this month, the Senate Budget Committee included language supporting pay parity in its fiscal 2005 budget resolution. An effort to include pay parity language in the House budget resolution was rejected last week by Republicans who were concerned about the additional costs of such a measure. A bloc of Republican House lawmakers, led by Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., have said the equal pay adjustments will add an unreasonable $2 billion onto next year's budget.

Davis reached an agreement with the House Republican leadership, however, to bring the pay parity issue to the full House in a separate resolution. Recent history indicates the effort will succeed, according to Marin.

"The vast majority of the House supported pay parity in February of this year," he said.

Marin said lawmakers recognize pay parity is needed to maintain an effective, competitive federal workforce. If the vote fails, however, pay parity supporters will still have another chance to ensure pay parity in the appropriations process.

"The final step is the appropriations," Marin said. "That's the last bite of the apple."