Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., (left) and Mark Warner, D-Va., head for a closed Democratic caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 28, 2023. The two, along with Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., led more than two dozen lawmakers in an appeal to the president to restore military-civilian pay parity. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Lawmakers call on Biden to grant feds a 4.5% raise in 2025, restoring pay parity
President Biden previously came under fire from federal employee groups and some lawmakers for proposing only a 2.0% average pay raise for civilian workers, abandoning a longstanding Democratic priority.
A group of 26 Democratic lawmakers across both the House and Senate on Wednesday urged President Biden to increase the pay raise planned for civilian federal workers next month to 4.5%, restoring military-civilian pay parity.
Biden turned heads among federal employee groups and Democrats last spring when he proposed just a 2.0% average pay raise for civilian federal workers, compared to the 4.5% planned for military service members. Biden formalized his alternative pay plan in August, stipulating that 1.7% would be devoted to across-the-board increases to basic pay and setting aside 0.3% to average locality pay increases.
In a letter to the president Wednesday, more than two dozen lawmakers, led by Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, D-Va., and Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., urged Biden to revise his pay plan to grant civilian federal workers the same 4.5% average increase that military service members will receive beginning next month.
“Although you submitted an alternative pay plan in August, it continued to support a differential pay increase: 4.5% for military employees and 2% for civilian employees,” the lawmakers wrote. “This deviation between military and civilian employee pay increases upends historic bipartisan support for pay parity across the federal workforce. Although we understand this decision was made under the constraints put in place by the Fiscal Responsibility Act caps, we believe it is imperative you revise your budget to align military and civilian employee pay raises.”
The lawmakers noted that late changes to presidents’ pay raise plans are not without precedent—former President Obama took similar action in 2016 before leaving office.
“Our request is grounded in longstanding tradition and precedent,” they wrote. “For example, on Dec. 8, 2016, President Barack Obama submitted an alternative federal pay plan to Congress that increased the federal civilian pay raise to the same level as military employees. We implore you to move swiftly to submit a revised alternative pay plan that supports our entire federal workforce.”
Whether or not Biden elects to grant Democrats’ requests, he still must issue an executive order finalizing his pay plan—and OPM must publish updated pay tables—before the end of the year.