The House late last week passed the 1999 Treasury-Postal appropriations bill, with measures affecting federal employees' financial, professional and personal lives.
In a blow to employees' advocates on Capitol Hill, the House struck out a provision that would have guaranteed higher pay raises for civil servants in the future. The provision, attached to the bill by Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., would have closed a loophole in the 1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA) that has kept raises lower than the law intended.
FEPCA sought to close the pay gap between federal employees and their private sector counterparts by granting civil servants gradually increasing locality pay increases. But President Clinton has avoided the FEPCA requirements each year by citing a section in the law that allows the President to waive the higher increases during times of "severe economic conditions." No definition of such conditions was included in the FEPCA legislation.
The Hoyer provision would have defined severe economic conditions as two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the real Gross Domestic Product.
Rep. Steve Largent, R-Okla., blocked the change on a technicality. Congressional rules, he pointed out, do not allow provisions that make changes to existing laws to be included in appropriations measures.
House conservatives also struck out $2.25 billion in emergency funds for solving the year 2000 computer problem. Civilian agencies could have drawn money from the emergency fund if Y2K snafus arose in fiscal 1999. The conservatives wanted the appropriations committee to find offsetting cuts for the Y2K funds. An appropriations committee spokeswoman said it would be difficult to come up with $4 billion in offsets. The Defense Appropriations bill had included $1.6 billion for Y2K emergencies at DoD, but those funds were also struck.
The bill includes two measures affecting the personal lives of federal employees. First, the bill requires insurance providers participating in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program to cover the costs of prescription contraceptives. Second, the act bars FEHBP providers from covering the cost of abortions. The abortion ban has been included in the Treasury bill for several years in a row.
The Senate has yet to take up the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill on the floor.
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