In 2021, as part of the White House’s effort to implement a $15 minimum wage for federal employees and contractors, Biden issued a series of cash bonuses to federal firefighters, many of whom were making less than $15 per hour at the time. Interior Department
A House funding bill would make recent federal firefighter pay raises permanent
The House Appropriations Committee is set to advance a spending package Tuesday that would codify recent temporary pay raises for federal wildland firefighters into law and fund them to the tune of $330 million.
House appropriators are expected to advance fiscal 2025 spending legislation that, if enacted, would continue to fund recently implemented pay raises for federal wildland firefighters past September and make those raises permanent.
The House Appropriations Committee began its consideration of the fiscal 2025 Interior, Environment and related agencies funding bill Tuesday afternoon. The measure sets funding levels for the Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency and a few other agencies at $38.5 billion next fiscal year, a decrease of $72 million from current spending levels and $4.4 billion less than President Biden requested in his annual budget proposal.
Though committee Democrats lambasted the bill for cuts to a variety of programs aimed at reducing carbon emissions and advancing environmental justice, including a 20% cut to the EPA, they praised the inclusion of $330 million to continue funding a series of recently implemented pay raises for federal wildland firefighters, along with language codifying those raises in law, effectively making them permanent.
“The bill provides over $330 million to permanently address federal wildland firefighter pay and capacity,” said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, chairman of the panel’s Interior and Environment Subcommittee, in a statement. “The permanent pay fix included in this bill will improve firefighter recruitment and retention and provide financial certainty to the men and women protecting our communities from catastrophic wildfires.”
“The bill includes authorizing language necessary for the administration to carry out its permanent pay reforms for federal wildland firefighters,” said Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, the subcommittee’s ranking member on Tuesday. “This is something we agree on, and I am pleased the bill addresses this important issue.”
In 2021, as part of the White House’s effort to implement a $15 minimum wage for federal employees and contractors, Biden issued a series of cash bonuses to federal firefighters, many of whom were making less than $15 per hour at the time. By then, the low pay associated with federal firefighting jobs had already fueled a staffing shortage, exacerbated by the expanding fire season due to climate change.
The bipartisan infrastructure law authorized temporary pay raises of up to $20,000 or 50% of a firefighter’s base salary, whichever is lower. But the money set aside for those raises ran out last fall, creating what advocates called a “pay cliff.” If those temporary raises weren’t extended, labor leaders warned of a looming exodus within the federal government’s firefighting corps.
But ultimately, lawmakers preserved funding for the raises across multiple short-term spending deals and a full-year spending package enacted in March extended the pay increases until September.
Elsewhere in Congress, lawmakers have introduced a series of bipartisan bills aimed at reforming how the federal government responds to wildfires, both in fighting the blazes and working to prevent them, based upon the recommendations of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, a panel established as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law.