National Journal / Yahoo ^ | 7/10/2012
The White House has threatened to veto a House appropriations bill that includes a pay raise for service members but not for civilian federal employees.
The Obama administration’s opposition to the Defense Department spending bill, which the House plans to take up next week, covers a lot of territory. In particular, the administration objected to appropriators not including a recommended 0.5 percent pay raise for civilians and for rejecting its proposals to increase TRICARE fees.
A permanent pay freeze for federal workers “is neither sustainable nor desirable,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a June 28 statement of administration policy, referencing the same language it has used to describe appropriators’ silence on a fiscal 2013 pay raise in other spending bills. The Defense spending bill does include a 1.7 percent pay raise for service members, which Obama recommended in his fiscal 2013 budget proposal. The House in May approved Defense authorization legislation that also includes a 1.7 percent pay boost for military members. That legislation rejected the administration’s recommendations to raise premiums for military retirees based on their retirement pay, among other fee hikes, but modestly raised TRICARE copays for brand and nonformulary drugs in 2013.
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