Walkinshaw to push for federal pay raise in lame duck spending talks

Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., fresh off his reelection this week, said Thursday that he will press for a 2027 pay raise for federal workers to be part of any deal to keep the government open past December 11.

The congressman, whose district is home to roughly 50,000 federal employees, told Editor-in-Chief Frank Konkel at GovExec’s After the Midterms event that the government must increase compensation in order to compete for talent, particularly after the last two years of buyouts, layoffs and mass firings. In August, President Trump formally proposed freezing most civilian federal workers’ pay next year.

“It is a really hard sell right now to get talented young people to come into the federal workforce given everything that’s happened, including both rhetorical and substantive attacks,” he said. “Tangibly, right now, what I hope to accomplish in [Congress’] lame duck [session] is perhaps a modest pay raise for the federal workforce. Right now, given rising costs and federal insurance premiums up 9 and 10%, a freeze is effectively a pay cut. So I hope to get a modest pay raise, and then moving forward we have to restore trust and we have to codify protections to prevent the mass job losses that we’ve seen.”

Walkinshaw told reporters his starting point in spending negotiations will be the 4.1% average pay increase as proposed earlier this year in his Federal Adjustment of Income Rates Act.

“That’s my preferred outcome,” he said. “That said, I’m going to get as much as I can. So if we can get 3%, that would be a huge improvement over 0%. My hope is that we can, well if we’re going to make it part of the government funding conversation in the runup to the December 11 expiration of the [continuing resolution], it could be, in the ideal world, part of that agreement. If not, we’ll fight it out in 2027 when any additional CR then expires.”

There is precedent for Congress retroactively overriding a president’s pay plan after the start of the calendar year. In February 2019, the new Democratic majority included a 1.9% pay raise as part of legislation to end the 35-day partial government shutdown that began in 2018.

Walkinshaw said he was also optimistic that lawmakers would pass legislation restoring the collective bargaining rights of more than 1 million federal employees, though likely not in full until after the new Congress is seated in January. The House this year has passed standalone legislation that would unwind President Trump’s executive orders, which banned unions at most federal agencies on national security grounds, and it has included language in its draft of the annual National Defense Authorization Act that would roll the edicts back for Defense Department workers.

“I think you will absolutely see the House, if we’re not successful in the NDAA or even if we are, . . . pass that legislation again, and then the question will be, ‘Can we get 60 votes in the Senate?’” he said. “So we’ll need four Republicans, probably, to support that in the Senate and I think there’s a path to doing that.”

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