Pay Freezes Past

Last week, the White House made public the salaries of all 487 of its employees. The data showed that Barack Obama followed through on one of his first official acts as president -- to freeze the salaries of his immediate staff making $100,000 or more. The data show that most of his senior employees earn about $172,200 annually, the same amount their counterparts earned in the final year of the Bush administration.

This isn't the first time the federal government has frozen pay in executive or leadership positions.

Congress held the Senior Executive Service pay cap in place from 1994 to 1997, as well as in 1999. That followed cutbacks in the SES by President Clinton.

"The effect on morale was awful, especially if you were at the top," said Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association. "We kept trying to work to raise the cap. The frustration is that a lot of these people could earn more on the outside. They care about what they do, and they tend to hang in, and hope that sooner or later it's going to be dealt with."

Bonosaro said that some of the members of her organization have worried that a similar SES pay cap freeze could be on the way under Obama, but that it is a small issue compared with larger, more immediate concerns, such as the lack of locality pay for senior executives.

So far, Obama has remained mum on whether the pay freeze for White House staff will remain in effect in 2010, and he has not hinted that it will extend beyond that group. In fact, in his budget outline the president recommended a 2 percent pay raise for civilian employees in 2010, and so far that is the lowest of the figures lawmakers are considering.

While Obama has kept individual salaries frozen, he has not put a limit on the overall staffing budget, which explains why, despite the freeze, that budget has increased since he took office.

Obama's White House has more staffers than did George W. Bush's, as Government Executive's sister publication, The Hotline, has noted in blog postings.

Some of Obama's predecessors, including Carter and Clinton, promised during their campaigns to cut the overall White House budget -- but whether they followed through is open to interpretation.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton vowed to cut the White House staff by 25 percent. When his administration announced it had met that goal, he endured criticism for using gimmicks -- such as eliminating panels with members who weren't paid by the White House in the first place -- to arrive at the final figure.

Paul Light, a professor of public policy at New York University, noted that one way to reduce White House staffing is to transfer responsibilities to detailees, who are workers on loan from other federal departments. Even if the numbers show a cutback, that often can be "illusionary," Light said.