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I am pleased to see the Senate Appropriations Committee has now added its important voice to those members of Congress calling for a 3.5 percent federal pay raise in 2008. It remains now for the full Senate to join the House of Representatives in approving this needed improvement in federal pay, and for the provision to become law and be implemented on a timely basis. Increasingly, there is both growing and bipartisan recognition in Congress of the important role played by fair and competitive pay in the ability of federal agencies to attract and retain high-quality employees, particularly in the continuing competition with the private sector for such employees. This pay raise, which would match the 3.5 percent raise for members of the military moving through the appropriations process, is one-half percentage point higher than proposed by the administration.

The legislation also signals the committee’s serious concern with use by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of private debt collectors by limiting funding for the program, even as it boosts overall IRS funding for such important matters as taxpayer customer service and enforcement. NTEU continues to strongly oppose the IRS’s ill-advised tax privatization program, and I welcome continuing congressional scrutiny and actions that seek to rein it in. The Senate committee rightfully included a provision directing the IRS to look at the possibility of retraining and reassigning IRS employees facing job loss to collection efforts before expanding the privatization program.