House FY23 Appropriations Bill Paves Way for 4.6 Percent Pay Raise

MYTH: Cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) to federal retirement annuities and federal employee pay raises both are based on the increase in consumer prices. REALITY: While current law provides for automatic COLAs to federal annuities based on the annual change in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), federal pay raises are based on the change in privatesector wages and salaries as measured by the Employment Cost Index (ECI), and must be authorized annually via affirmative congressional and/or executive action.

Even as NARFE’s advocacy efforts throughout the year helped build support for H.R. 82, we continued to push to gain additional cosponsors through the spring and summer, with the hope of gaining 290 by the end of July. As of this writing, the outcome was still uncertain, but our push continues, whether to make progress this Congress or build momentum going into next Congress.

Notably, NARFE National President Ken Thomas sent letters to a targeted group of House holdouts urging them to cosponsor H.R. 82, as NARFE’s lobbying team conducted meetings to discuss the issues. Meanwhile, NARFE employed a targeted grasstops and grassroots advocacy effort, pushing NARFE members to contact lawmakers directly, and NARFE leaders to request meetings with their representatives or their staff. These efforts have helped increase the cosponsor number, one member at a time, toward the 290 mark.

Do you know if your Representative is a cosponsor of the Social Security Fairness Act? Visit the NARFE Legislative Action Center on www.narfe.org and find out. You can personalize a message and send to your Representative directly. If your lawmaker is already a cosponsor, the system will prompt you to send a thank you message instead.

—BY HANNAH MCLAIN, GRASSROOTS AND PROGRAMS ASSISTANT

On June 16, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) advanced its fiscal year 2023 (FY23) appropriations bill. This bill historically has been the vehicle for Congress to assert itself with regard to federal pay rates for the coinciding calendar year. But if Congress remains silent, as the House has done with its FY23 version of the FSGG appropriations bill, the decision is left to the president, who proposed a 4.6 percent average pay increase in his FY23 budget.

In the past, FSGG appropriations bills have specified amounts for acrossthe-board and locality pay increases, sometimes matching the president’s proposal and sometimes differing. But when Congress remains silent in the FSGG bill (and through any other legislation), the president retains the authority to provide a federal pay increase.

In his FY23 budget, President Joseph R. Biden proposed a 4.6 percent average pay increase, indicating his future intent on the issue. The budget did not specify the breakdown of that average raise between across-the-board increases and locality pay, but statute directs the president to provide a 4.1 percent pay increase across the board, if he does not exercise any exception to that policy. The president will take the next step toward authorizing the pay increase when he delivers his Alternative Pay Plan to Congress by the end of August. If the 4.6 percent increase is enacted, this would be the largest increase in federal pay since 2002.

While the FSGG bill did not specify a pay raise, other House members are pushing for a larger 5.1 percent pay raise in a standalone bill, H.R. 6398, the Federal Adjustment of Income Rates (FAIR) Act, which was introduced by Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-VA. You can write to your members of Congress to urge their support for the bill at NARFE’s Legislative Action Center at www.narfe.org.

—BY JOHN ROBERT AYERS, POLICY AND PROGRAMS ASSISTANT