Federal wildland firefighters earn as little as $15 per hour, with entry level positions earning just less than $27,000 per year, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group. (Photo by U.S. Forest Service)

The $20,000 salary increase for wildland firefighters in the 2021 infrastructure law could be coming to an end next week if Congress doesn’t act.

The infrastructure law included $600 million to boost salaries for the nearly 11,200 wildland firefighters for two years, giving the Interior Department or Forest Service employees a raise of either $20,000 each or 50% of their base salary.

Federal wildland firefighters earn as little as $15 per hour, with entry level positions earning just less than $27,000 per year, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group. Those rates are well below those of some state employees in similar roles.

The problem is Congress provided the higher pay rate would expire with the rest of government spending, which is set for Dec. 20.

Lawmakers are likely to once again pass a continuing resolution prior to that deadline to keep the government open at current spending levels into the new year.

But because the firefighter pay boost was part of the infrastructure law instead of a yearly spending bill, it would require additional legislation to keep being paid out beyond Dec. 20.

Firefighters, their advocates and some members of Congress are now pushing to have the pay raise made permanent, as lawmakers enter the final days of this session of Congress.

Disaster bill

President Joe Biden asked for a disaster relief spending bill after hurricanes Helene and Milton to include $24 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Biden called for the bill — which is expected to be attached to the continuing resolution — to include “statutory language to support permanent, comprehensive pay reform for Federal wildland firefighters.”

The disaster aid bill appears the best chance of addressing the issue this year.

And appropriators are looking at fixing the issue in their annual funding bills, even as work on those bills is likely to be paused as Congress instead looks to pass a stopgap measure past Dec. 20 to keep the government funded for the next few months.

A House proposal included in Republicans’ spending bill covering the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies would direct $330 million for a pay increase to replace the expiring infrastructure law salary increase. It would be a permanent pay fix.

Setting a baseline in an annual spending bill would help keep the salaries consistent and avoid the uncertainty that comes with the expiration of the one-time infrastructure law funding, supporters say.

“Rather than continuing temporary and uncertain Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) supplemental payments, the funding in this bill will permanently address Federal wildland firefighter pay and capacity,” the funding bill’s chief sponsor, Idaho Republican Mike Simpson, and Oregon Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer wrote in an August op-ed in the Idaho Statesman.

Simpson is the chair of the subcommittee responsible for writing the bill. Chavez-DeRemer, who represents a purple district in Central Oregon, lost her reelection bid this fall but won a nomination to join President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet as secretary of Labor.

The Musk-Ramaswamy cost-cutting drive

The effort comes amid an atmosphere favorable to funding cuts in Washington. Republicans, who will soon have unified control of Washington as Trump returns to the Oval Office, have blamed the inflation of the past four years on high government spending.

Trump has tasked entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy with looking at ways to reduce federal spending. The pair of wealthy Trump backers has estimated $2 trillion could be trimmed from the $6.75 trillion annual budget, though they have been vague about what exactly would be chopped.

The Musk-Ramaswamy organization, which has not been formally created but is dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is not expected to be an official government entity. A Trump spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment about whether wildland firefighter pay would be a target for funding cuts.

Finding the political will to increase spending for any purpose in such an environment could be challenging, though increasing the pay of wildland firefighters — who work to manage the increasingly severe and costly fires that particularly ravage the rural areas known as the wildland-urban interface — has support from across the political spectrum in Congress, including leading GOP members.

The House funding bill authored by Simpson that included the pay raise passed the House nearly along party lines.

In a video message to constituents this month, Simpson sounded broadly supportive of Musk and Ramaswamy’s mission, but indicated there were areas he would fight to avoid cuts. He did not explicitly mention firefighter pay.

“It will be an interesting debate,” Simpson said of the effort to identify funding cuts. “I don’t mind having outside eyes look at how Congress does their job and how the money is spent. It could be spent more efficiently and more effectively, thus saving the taxpayer money.”

He added he was “excited” to see recommendations from the pair.

“There will be some I suspect I disagree with and a lot of them I probably agree with,” he said. “So that will be a debate for Congress.”

Senate bill

The Senate, which generally requires a much more bipartisan approach than the House, has not passed the Simpson-authored bill that Democrats opposed because of its drastic cuts to the Interior Department and EPA.

But the Senate companion spending bill, sponsored by Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley, who chairs the corresponding spending panel in the Senate, also includes a permanent raise for wildland firefighters, as well as funding for a firefighter health and wellness program and a fund for housing.

“This bill honors the courageous work our federal wildland firefighters do by establishing a permanent fix to prevent a devastating pay cut,” Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, said in a statement after the committee passed the bill 28-1 in July.

The U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Congress overwhelmingly approved a stopgap spending bill Wednesday that will keep the federal government running through Dec. 20, though the divided Congress has a lot of negotiating to do if members want to pass the dozen full-year appropriations bills before their new deadline.

The short-term funding bill, sometimes referred to as a continuing resolution, will avoid a partial government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

The CR is supposed to give lawmakers more time to hash out agreement on the appropriations bills. But Congress regularly uses it as a safety net to push off or entirely avoid making decisions about which departments should get more funding and whether to change policy about how federal tax dollars are spent.

Debate on the CR was broadly bipartisan with Democrats and Republicans voicing support ahead of the 341-82 House vote and the 78-18 Senate vote. 

President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill ahead of the Oct. 1 shutdown deadline.

‘Plenty of problems’ ahead

The stopgap bill was the last major legislation considered by Congress before Election Day. A lame-duck session is scheduled to begin Nov. 12.

“In a matter of days, funding for fiscal year 2024 will run out and it’s Congress’ responsibility to ensure that the government remains open and serving the American people,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said during floor debate. “We are here to avert harmful disruptions to our national security and vital programs our constituents rely on.”

Cole said he hopes Congress can approve the dozen full-year bills later this year.

“The next president and the next Congress should not be forced to do the work of this administration and this Congress,” Cole said. “They’re going to have plenty of problems … let’s not throw a potential government shutdown in front of them as well.”

Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member on the spending panel, said lawmakers must begin conference talks in the days ahead to reach a bipartisan agreement on the full-year spending bills.

“No matter who wins in November, we owe it to the next Congress and the next president to not saddle them with yesterday’s problems,” DeLauro said.

Noncitizen voting bill dropped

Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy spoke against the stopgap spending bill and expressed frustration that lawmakers were, once again, relying on a continuing resolution instead of having met the Oct. 1 deadline to pass the full-year spending bills.

“We should not be kicking the can down the road to Dec. 20, a mere five days before Christmas, which is what this town always does,” he said.

Roy also criticized House GOP leaders for not sticking with a six-month stopgap spending bill that carried with it a bill to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

House leaders brought that bill to the floor last week, but didn’t garner the votes needed to send it to the Senate. Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal.

Secret Service spending

The 49-page continuing resolution extends the funding levels and policies that Congress approved earlier this year as part of its last appropriations process.

Lawmakers included a provision that will let the Secret Service spend money at a faster rate than what would have otherwise been allowed “for protective operations, including for activities relating to National Special Security Events and the 2024 Presidential Campaign,” according to a summary of the bill.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency got a similar provision so it can spend more money that would have otherwise been permitted from its disaster relief fund. The Forest Service’s Wildland Fire

Management account was also granted a faster spend rate.

The stopgap spending bill extended authorization for the National Flood Insurance Program as well as several other federal programs that were on track to expire at the end of September.

November election

Whether Congress reaches agreement with the Biden administration on the dozen full-year government funding bills later this year will likely depend on the outcome of the November elections.

Voters choosing divided government for another two years will likely incentivize leaders to work out bipartisan, bicameral agreements during the five weeks Congress is in session during November and December.

Republicans or Democrats securing unified control of the House, Senate and White House could result in another stopgap spending bill pushing off decisions until after the next Congress and next president take their oaths of office in January.

A new president, a new budget ask

Regardless of when Congress completes work on the dozen full-year funding bills, the next president will likely submit their first budget request to lawmakers sometime next spring, starting the annual process all over again.

The president is supposed to release the budget request in early February, but that’s often delayed during the first year of a new administration.

The House and Senate Appropriations committees will then begin holding hearings with Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to ask about their individual requests and begin assessing whether lawmakers will boost their spending.

The Appropriations Committees in each chamber will likely release their separate slates of full-year appropriations bills next summer, possibly followed by floor debate.

This year the House Appropriations Committee reported all dozen of its bills to the floor, following party-line votes when Democrats objected to both spending levels and policy language.

House Republicans approved five of those bills on the floor.

Senate appropriators took broadly bipartisan votes to approve 11 of their bills in committee, save the Homeland Security measure. None of the bills has gone to the floor for amendment debate and a final vote.

That’s not entirely uncommon in the Senate, where floor time is often dedicated to approving judicial nominees and it can take weeks to approve one spending bill.

The House, by contrast, can approve bills in a matter of hours or days if leadership has secured the votes.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

The U.S. Capitol on Sept. 23, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Congress is on track to approve legislation this week that will give lawmakers until mid-December to broker agreement on the annual government funding bills that were supposed to become law before the end of this month.

The stopgap spending bill, also known as a continuing resolution, has the broad bipartisan support it needs to move through House and Senate votes this week, though senators will need to reach agreement to vote on the legislation before the Oct. 1 deadline when federal spending runs out.

The 49-page bill, released Sunday after weeks of stalemate as House Republicans went at it alone, is no guarantee that Congress will actually wrap up its work on the full-year bills during the next 12 weeks left before this session of Congress is over, since lawmakers can pass as many stopgap spending bills as they want.

Continuing resolutions essentially extend current spending levels and policy for a set amount of time. They are intended to give the House and Senate additional time to conference final versions of the dozen full-year spending bills.

Nov. 5 election and the lame duck

The election results will likely determine whether the Republican House and Democratic Senate move to reach agreement on the full-year bills during the lame-duck session that will begin after Election Day, or kick the can down the road into next year, when the balance of power could be substantially different.

Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, appears inclined toward wrapping up work on the full-year appropriations bills in December, saying during a press conference Tuesday that lawmakers would deal with funding decisions during the lame-duck session.

Johnson signaled that he’s going to try to move all the final, conferenced spending bills across the floor one by one, as opposed to bundling all 12 together in an omnibus or packaging several of the bills together in what’s called a mini-bus. Such large bills regularly draw opposition from conservative Republicans.

“We have broken the Christmas omni and I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition,” Johnson said. “We don’t want any buses, we’re not going to do any buses.”

The stopgap spending bill Congress is expected to approve this week would set the next deadline for government funding on Dec. 20, four days before Christmas.

Senate and House both struggle

Johnson also laid the blame for Congress not completing work on the full-year government funding bills at the feet of Senate Democrats, arguing that the House did all of its work.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved 11 of the dozen appropriations bills with broadly bipartisan votes, but was unable to garner consensus on the Homeland Security spending bill.

None of those bills have come up on the Senate floor for votes, in part, because it can take weeks in that chamber to move spending bills through the amendment process.

The House Appropriations Committee reported its dozen bills out along party-line votes, without the Democratic support that would be needed for the bills to actually become law during divided government.

House Republican leaders passed five of the bills across the floor, including Defense, Homeland Security, Interior-Environment, Military Construction-VA and State-Foreign Operations.

House GOP leaders attempted to pass the Legislative Branch bill, which provides funding for Congress and its associated agencies, but were unsuccessful. House rules allow that chamber to debate and hold votes on bills in a matter of hours, a much faster pace than the days or weeks it often takes the Senate.

Neither Senate leaders nor House leadership have made any effort to conference the full-year spending bills, a process that is needed to reach the bipartisan, bicameral versions that must pass if Congress wants to avoid another stopgap spending bill in December.

The process typically takes at least six weeks, and with both chambers set to leave town at the end of this week for a six-week break, there likely won’t be enough time to conference all the bills before the mid-December deadline that will be set by the continuing resolution.

‘Stay away from poison pills’

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, criticized Johnson for trying to pass a six-month stopgap spending bill through the House earlier this month, saying it was a waste of time.

That legislation, which didn’t garner the support to pass, included with it a GOP bill that would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote.

“If both sides keep working together, if we stay away from poison pills and partisan spectacle, then the American people can rest assured there won’t be a government shutdown,” Schumer said. “But we still have more work to do.”

The Biden administration signaled its support for the stopgap spending bill Tuesday, releasing a Statement of Administration Policy calling “for swift passage of this bill in both chambers of the Congress to avoid a costly, unnecessary Government shutdown and to ensure there is adequate time to pass full-year FY 2025 appropriations bills later this year.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE