Lawmakers renew fight for military-civilian pay parity

Ten House members from the Washington metropolitan area wrote to President Bush Tuesday urging him to include equivalent raises for military and civil service employees when he releases his 2006 budget proposal next month.

The group includes two Republicans, Tom Davis and Frank Wolf of Virginia, and eight Democrats: Steny Hoyer, Benjamin Cardin, Elijah Cummings, Dutch Ruppersberger, Chris Van Hollen and Albert Wynn of Maryland, James Moran of Virginia, and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington.

In his budget proposal last year, Bush asked Congress for a 3.5 percent raise for the military, but only a 1.5 percent increase for the civil service. Congress overruled the president and provided both groups with a 3.5 percent pay raise.

"We believe anything less than an equal pay adjustment in 2006 sends the regrettable message that the services civilians provide to America every day are not highly valued," the letter said.

With the government facing a potential wave of retirements, the need to stay competitive with private sector salaries is keen, the writers continued.

For more than a decade, presidents have proposed annual pay raises for General Schedule workers lower than those eventually enacted by Congress. The roots of the conflict are in the 1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act, sponsored by Hoyer, which aimed to close a gap of 23 percent that some experts believe existed between civil service salaries and those in the private sector. The act went into effect in 1993, but no president has followed the formulas provided in the act for setting civilian pay.

To overrule the pay formulas established in the law, President Bush has each year proposed a different plan. For example, he proposed a 2.1 percent raise for 2004. Congress eventually enacted an average 4.1 percent raise. For 2003, Bush proposed 2.6 percent; Congress approved 4.1 percent. In Bush's first budget, for 2002, he proposed a 3.6 percent raise. Congress bumped it up to 4.6 percent.

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations argued that the pay formula in the 1990 act overstated the pay gap and that raises should be more closely tied to inflation. The House members in this week's letter indicated that they disagree.

"Historically, Congress has expressed strong bipartisan support for parity in pay adjustments between our military and federal civilian sectors," they wrote, "due to the essential service military and civilian employees provide to our nation and the vast wage gap that exists between public and private sector wages."