Federal Daily News
House passes pay freeze extension
The House of Representatives on Feb. 1 passed a bill that would extend the current federal civilian pay freeze through 2013. The move also would freeze pay for members of Congress.
The bill (H.R. 3835), sponsored by Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), passed on a vote of 309 to 117. The House voted on the bill under suspension of rules that required a two-thirds majority for passage.
On passage of the bill, Duffy released a statement characterizing the measure as a shared sacrifice.
“Millions of families across the country have been forced to tighten their belts during these tough economic times, and our federal government must do the same,” Duffy said. “While Congress asks the rest of the government to cut costs, it’s important that we ask the same of ourselves. That is why I included a pay freeze on congressional salaries as well.”
Supporters of the bill, such as House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), pointed to a Congressional Budget Office study released earlier in the week that found that total compensation for federal employees was 16 percent greater than for private-sector counterparts. The difference in wages between the two groups was narrower: CBO found feds made 2 percent more on average.
“The Oversight Committee has been reviewing federal compensation issues since March of last year, and has worked to bring forward solutions addressing the inequity between compensation of federal employees and private sector workers who make comparably less,” Issa said.
But union leaders this week maintained that the CBO lacks expertise in the matter, and that it relies on many of the wrong factors in its calculation of wages and compensation.
They maintain that numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, on the other hand, consistently have shown that feds make less than private-sector counterparts, and that those numbers are drawn from a more sound methodology. Unions pointed out that the CBO method incorporates demographic characteristics they say are irrelevant to pay-setting, such as race, gender and ethnicity, whereas the BLS compares job duties and responsibilities.
According to American Federation of Government Employees President John Gage, the CBO study touted by the bill's sponsors “answered an entirely academic and irrelevant question for federal pay policy.”
The bill now goes to the Senate.