Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The leader of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today offered strong support for a pending amendment to the fiscal 2013 National Defense Authorization Act that would cap the compensation of all Defense Department contractor employees at the same level as the annual pay of the U.S. president--$400,000.

Currently, government contractors, including those at the Defense Department, can charge taxpayers almost $765,000 for the salaries of their employees, nearly double what it was in 1998.

In a letter to Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley applauded his amendment to the defense authorization measure that would cap the salary of defense contractor employees at $400,000. In a separate letter to the House Rules Committee, the NTEU leader urged that body to rule in order the Tonko amendment, so it could come to a vote.

The Tonko amendment, she said, would correct the serious problem of excessive contractor salaries by capping salary reimbursements from taxpayers for all defense contractor employees at $400,000, equal to the salary earned by the president.

The NTEU leader added that “at a time when our economy is struggling, millions of Americans are unemployed, and our national debt and deficit continue to grow, taxpayers should not fund government salary reimbursements for private contractors that are higher than the salary of the President of the United States.”

President Kelley has long argued that the cap and the mandated escalator clause associated with it lead to outrageous and unnecessarily-high payments to private contractors. “We greatly appreciate your leadership on this issue and stand ready to do all we can to ensure passage of this critical amendment,” she wrote to Rep. Tonko.

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.