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Biden FY24 Budget Includes Pay Raise, OPM Customer Service Improvements 

The Biden Administration’s Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) budget proposal is out. It seeks funds to improve OPM customer service to annuitants, proposes a 5.2 percent average pay raise for federal employees and more.  

The White House highlighted its request for “$6.6 million for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to help reduce processing times and improve customer satisfaction, expand a pilot for online retirement application, and begin to fund additional IT modernization initiatives akin to a case management system.” This focus came as welcome news to NARFE, as NARFE National President William Shackelford urged the administration to focus on customer service improvements via adequate funding and improved technology in his January letter to President Biden. 

The budget proposes a 5.2 percent average pay raise for federal employees, in line with the requested military pay raise and recent changes in private-sector wages. Shackelford urged the administration to support this amount in his January letter and applauded the announcement. If Congress does not block the raise, the president may authorize it based on existing statutory law. While the budget does not specify this, if the administration follows past precedent, the raise will come via a 4.7 percent across-the-board increase and a 0.5 percent average increase in locality pay rates.  

The administration also outlined the budget’s support for the President’s Management Agenda priority to strengthen and empower the federal workforce via various initiatives, notably efforts to improve federal hiring processes. It focuses on advancing “Talent Teams,” promoting pooled hiring actions, and quality employee assessments by including subject matter experts in the qualification process, among other strategies. 

In addition to these provisions, the budget also indicates support for the following: 

  • Legislation to prevent a return of Schedule F, a broad new exception to merit-based civil service rules. 
  • Legislation to require coverage of three primary care visits and three behavioral health visits without cost-sharing for all Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) plans. 
  • Legislation to limit cost sharing for insulin for all FEHB plans. 
  • Legislation to allow disabled children of Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) annuitants who are incapable of self-support to reinstate survivor annuities when the annuity had previously been terminated due to substantial employment income, as is permitted under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). 

These are just some of the highlights of the budget as it pertains to the federal workforce and NARFE’s issues. But the entire budget contains much more. If interested, budget highlights and documents can be accessed here.