DOL Pay Freeze Dropped from Senate Spending Bill

A proposal to freeze pay for Labor Department employees was left out of a recently passed spending bill.

An amendment that had been recently proposed to freeze pay for federal employees at the Department of Labor did not make it into the spending bill that was recently passed by the Senate.

On Thursday, the Senate passed a spending bill (H.R. 6157) funding the Departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and other agencies. It was passed in the hopes of avoiding another government shutdown at the end of the current fiscal year.

Absent from the spending bill was Senator John Kennedy’s (R-LA) proposed amendment for a pay freeze on Labor Department employees. Kennedy had introduced the amendment on August 16 as a way to help reduce “improper payments” within the agency. He did not bring it forward for a vote, thus leaving it out of the version of the bill that was passed.

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Ian Smith is one of the co-founders of FedSmith.com. He has over 20 years of combined experience in media and government services, having worked at two government contracting firms and an online news and web development company prior to his current role at FedSmith.