By Erich Wagner, Government Executive

Congressional negotiators on Tuesday night finally revealed a compromise version of the annual defense policy bill with the aim of passing it through both the House and Senate this week. But to some lawmakers, federal employee groups and good government experts’ chagrin, the measure did not include a provision aimed at blocking Republican-led efforts to strip potentially tens of thousands of federal employees of their civil service protections.

In the waning months of the Trump administration, then-President Trump signed an executive order establishing a new job category outside of the competitive service called Schedule F and requiring agencies to convert federal workers in “policy-related” positions into the new classification, making them effectively at-will employees.

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Results from the annual survey that measures the views of the federal workforce are out. Overall employee satisfaction dipped slightly from the previous year, while engagement remained steady.

By Erich Wagner, Government Executive

With just two weeks remaining before a deadline to keep the government open and a month left until the end of Congress’ term, pressure is mounting on lawmakers to reach last-minute deals on fiscal 2023 appropriations and the annual defense policy bill. But that also means there’s just one month left for Congress and the White House to act to ensure federal employees receive a pay raise next year.

President Biden initially proposed an average 4.6% pay increase for civilian federal workers in 2023 as part of his fiscal 2023 budget request last spring, split between a 4.1% across-the-board increase in basic pay and an average 0.5% boost to locality pay. Biden formalized that figure when he released his alternative pay plan in August, an annual document that the White House publishes to prevent much larger automatic increases to locality pay from taking effect in accordance with the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act.

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Effective December 19 and through the following 24 months the Federal Long-Term Care Insurance Program will not accept new enrollments or requests for increases in existing coverage, OPM has said.

Michael Gennaro, Government Executive -

The legislation allows first responders with disabilities to continue receiving federal retirement benefits in the same manner as though they had not been disabled.

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Republicans have threatened to upend the infusion of cash allocated to the Internal Revenue Service by the Inflation Reduction Act since virtually the moment President Biden signed it into law.

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OPM has said it will soon send out guidance encouraging agencies to remind supervisors when subordinates are nearing the end of their probationary periods, although they will not be required to do so. That statement was in a November 10 Federal Register notice finalizing the repeal of rules OPM had issued in late 2020 under Trump administration orders.

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President Biden on Thursday announced he will nominate Danny Werfel as the next Internal Revenue Service Commissioner, tapping a long-time public servant who briefly led the tax agency under President Obama.

Staff Cuts and Budget Increases Are Both on Tap for 2019

By Eric Katz, Government Executive

The Trump administration has provided federal agencies with the latitude to request up to a 5 percent funding boost in fiscal 2019, saying the White House may accommodate a “limited number” of programmatic increases in its final blueprint.

Generally, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said in a memorandum to department and agency heads, agencies should keep their 2019 spending requests in line with what the White House spelled out in the fiscal 2018 budget submission. They should also, however, “identify additional investments in effective programs that further support their mission and fill a clear federal role.”