How Feds Can Get a Pay Raise

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., took to the House floor on New Year's Day to make the GOP case for extending the two-year federal pay freeze. 

In the process, he acknowledged that federal employees were "hard-working," but said denying an across-the-board salary increase was simply a matter of sound budgeting in tight fiscal times. 

Issa also offered what he characterized as a path toward future raises: rooting out duplication and inefficiency and restructuring federal agencies to wring savings from the budget. "The best way for federal workers to get a pay raise without it being on the backs of the the American people is to reorganize government," he said.

Issa declared he had made spearheading such a reorganization effort his New Year's resolution for 2013.