White House: Planned pay gains too costly

By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, May 19, 2007

As the House of Representatives prepared to pass its fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill, the White House urged lawmakers to reconsider a host of costly personnel initiatives added by the Armed Services Committee.

Initiatives opposed by the White House included:

Bigger pay raises

The House was set to vote for a 3.5 percent basic pay increase for January 2008. That’s 0.5 percent higher than proposed by the Bush administration. The House would continue a string of annual raises set 0.5 percent higher than private sector wage growth through at least 2012.