Federal Employee Performance and Accountability Act of 2025
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Sen. Blackburn, Marsha [R-TN]
ID: B001243
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Bill Summary
Another brilliant piece of legislation from the esteemed members of Congress. *Sarcasm alert*
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The Federal Employee Performance and Accountability Act of 2025 is a 5-year pilot program aimed at introducing performance-based pay structures for certain federal employees. The bill's sponsors claim it will enhance productivity, accountability, and employee satisfaction in public service. How quaint.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:**
* Establishes a tiered salary adjustment system based on annual performance evaluations * Participating agencies must implement standardized, objective performance evaluation systems * Employees who exceed expectations (Tier 1) receive a 15% pay increase, while those who meet expectations (Tier 2) get nothing, and those who fail to meet expectations (Tier 3) are left to wonder why they bothered showing up
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:**
* Eligible federal employees in GS-11 to GS-15 positions or senior-level positions with clearly measurable performance criteria * Executive agencies participating in the program (unless they opt-out due to national security or public safety concerns) * The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, who gets to oversee this mess
**Potential Impact & Implications:**
This bill is a classic case of "solution in search of a problem." It's a thinly veiled attempt to justify pay cuts for underperforming employees while giving lip service to accountability. The real disease here is the chronic inability of Congress to address the root causes of bureaucratic inefficiency.
The program's design is riddled with flaws, including:
* Overemphasis on quantifiable metrics that may not accurately reflect employee performance * Lack of clear guidelines for evaluating "exceeds expectations" or "meets expectations" * No provisions for addressing systemic issues that might hinder employee productivity
This bill will likely lead to:
* Gaming the system by employees and agencies to maximize pay increases * Increased administrative burdens on participating agencies * Further demotivation of federal employees who feel undervalued and overworked
In short, this bill is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. It's a half-hearted attempt to address symptoms rather than treating the underlying disease of bureaucratic inefficiency. But hey, at least it'll give politicians something to crow about during election season.
Diagnosis: Terminal case of bureaucratic sclerosis, with symptoms including incompetence, cowardice, and a healthy dose of self-interest. Prognosis: Poor. Treatment: Not applicable, as Congress is unlikely to take the necessary steps to address the root causes of this disease.
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Sen. Blackburn, Marsha [R-TN]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 70 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Title 5 of the U.S. Code charges the OPM with executing, administering, and enforcing the rules, regulations, and laws governing the civil service.2 It grants the OPM direct responsibility for activities like retirement, pay, health, training, federal unionization, suitability, and classification functions not specifically granted to other agencies by statute. The agency’s Director is charged with aiding the President, as the President may request, in preparing such civil service rules as the President pre- scribes and otherwise advising the President on actions that may be taken to promote an efficient civil service and a systematic application of the merit system principles, including recommending policies relating to the selection, promotion, transfer, per- formance, pay, conditions of service, tenure, and separation of employees. The MSPB is the lead adjudicator for hearing and resolving cases and contro- versies for 2.2 million federal employees.3 It is required to conduct fair and neutral case adjudications, regulatory reviews, and actions and studies to improve the workforce. Its court-like adjudications investigate and hear appeals from agency actions such as furloughs, suspensions, demotions, and terminations and are appealable to the U.S. Court of Appeals. The FLRA hears appeals of agency personnel cases involving federal labor griev- ance procedures to provide judicial review with binding decisions appealable to appeals courts.4 It interprets the rights and duties of agencies and employee labor organizations—on management rights, OPM interpretations, recognition of labor organizations, and unfair labor practices—under the general principle of bargain- ing in good faith and compelling need. The OSC serves as the investigator, mediator, publisher, and prosecutor before the MSPB with respect to agency and employees regarding prohibited person- nel practices, Hatch Act5 politicization, Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act6 issues, and whistleblower complaints.7 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has general respon- sibility for reviewing charges of employee discrimination against all civil rights breaches. However, it also administers a government employee section that investi- gates and adjudicates federal employee complaints concerning equal employment violations as with the private sector.8 This makes the agency an additional de facto factor in government personnel management. While not a personnel agency per se, the General Services Administration (GSA) is charged with general supervision of contracting.9 Today, there are many more contractors in government than there are civil service employees. The GSA must therefore be a part of any personnel management discussion. ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OPM: Managing the Federal Bureaucracy. At the very pinnacle of the modern progressive program to make government competent stands the ideal of professionalized, career civil service. Since the turn of the 20th century,
Introduction
— 70 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Title 5 of the U.S. Code charges the OPM with executing, administering, and enforcing the rules, regulations, and laws governing the civil service.2 It grants the OPM direct responsibility for activities like retirement, pay, health, training, federal unionization, suitability, and classification functions not specifically granted to other agencies by statute. The agency’s Director is charged with aiding the President, as the President may request, in preparing such civil service rules as the President pre- scribes and otherwise advising the President on actions that may be taken to promote an efficient civil service and a systematic application of the merit system principles, including recommending policies relating to the selection, promotion, transfer, per- formance, pay, conditions of service, tenure, and separation of employees. The MSPB is the lead adjudicator for hearing and resolving cases and contro- versies for 2.2 million federal employees.3 It is required to conduct fair and neutral case adjudications, regulatory reviews, and actions and studies to improve the workforce. Its court-like adjudications investigate and hear appeals from agency actions such as furloughs, suspensions, demotions, and terminations and are appealable to the U.S. Court of Appeals. The FLRA hears appeals of agency personnel cases involving federal labor griev- ance procedures to provide judicial review with binding decisions appealable to appeals courts.4 It interprets the rights and duties of agencies and employee labor organizations—on management rights, OPM interpretations, recognition of labor organizations, and unfair labor practices—under the general principle of bargain- ing in good faith and compelling need. The OSC serves as the investigator, mediator, publisher, and prosecutor before the MSPB with respect to agency and employees regarding prohibited person- nel practices, Hatch Act5 politicization, Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act6 issues, and whistleblower complaints.7 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has general respon- sibility for reviewing charges of employee discrimination against all civil rights breaches. However, it also administers a government employee section that investi- gates and adjudicates federal employee complaints concerning equal employment violations as with the private sector.8 This makes the agency an additional de facto factor in government personnel management. While not a personnel agency per se, the General Services Administration (GSA) is charged with general supervision of contracting.9 Today, there are many more contractors in government than there are civil service employees. The GSA must therefore be a part of any personnel management discussion. ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OPM: Managing the Federal Bureaucracy. At the very pinnacle of the modern progressive program to make government competent stands the ideal of professionalized, career civil service. Since the turn of the 20th century, — 71 — Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy progressives have sought a system that could effectively select, train, reward, and guard from partisan influence the neutral scientific experts they believe are required to staff the national government and run the administrative state. Their U.S. system was initiated by the Pendleton Act of 188310 and institutionalized by the 1930s New Deal to set principles and practices that were meant to ensure that expert merit rather than partisan favors or personal favoritism ruled within the federal bureaucracy. Yet, as public frustration with the civil service has grown, generating calls to “drain the swamp,” it has become clear that their project has had serious unintended consequences. The civil service was devised to replace the amateurism and presumed corrup- tion of the old spoils system, wherein government jobs rewarded loyal partisans who might or might not have professional backgrounds. Although the system appeared to be sufficient for the nation’s first century, progressive intellectuals and activists demanded a more professionalized, scientific, and politically neutral Administration. Progressives designed a merit system to promote expertise and shield bureaucrats from partisan political pressure, but it soon began to insulate civil servants from accountability. The modern merit system increasingly made it almost impossible to fire all but the most incompetent civil servants. Complying with arcane rules regarding recruiting, rating, hiring, and firing simply replaced the goal of cultivating competence and expertise. In the 1970s, Georgia Democratic Governor Jimmy Carter, then a political unknown, ran for President supporting New Deal programs and their Great Soci- ety expansion but opposing the way they were being administered. The policies were not actually reducing poverty, increasing prosperity, or improving the envi- ronment, he argued, and to make them work required fundamental bureaucratic reform. He correctly charged that almost all government employees were rated as “successful,” all received the same pay regardless of performance, and even the worst were impossible to fire—and he won the presidency. President Carter fulfilled his campaign promise by hiring Syracuse University Dean Alan Campbell, who served first as Chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Com- mission and then as Director of the OPM and helped him devise and pass the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA)11 to reset the basic structure of today’s bureau- cracy. A new performance appraisal system was devised with a five rather than three distribution of rating categories and individual goals more related to agency missions and more related to employee promotion for all. Pay and benefits were based directly on improved performance appraisals (including sizable bonuses) for mid-level managers and senior executives. But time ran out on President Carter before the act could be fully executed, so it was left to President Ronald Reagan and his new OPM and agency leadership to implement. Overall, the new law seemed to work for a few years under Reagan, but the Carter– Reagan reforms were dissipated within a decade. Today, employee evaluation is back
Introduction
— 76 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise to delay. With the proper limitation of labor union actions, the FLRA should have limited reason for appeals. The EEOC’s federal employee section should be transferred to the MSPB, and many of the OCS’s investigatory functions should be returned to the OPM. The MSPB could then become the main reviewer of adverse actions, greatly simplifying the burdensome appeal process. Making Civil Service Benefits Economically and Administratively Ratio- nal. In recent years, the combined wages and benefits of the executive branch civilian workforce totaled $300 billion according to official data. But even that amount does not properly account for billions in unfunded liability for retirement and other government reporting distortions. Official data also report employment as approximately 2 million, but this ignores approximately 20 million contractors who, while not eligible for government pay and benefits, do receive them indirectly through contracting (even if they are less generous). Official data also claim that national government employees are paid less than private-sector employees are paid for similar work, but several more neutral sources demonstrate that pub- lic-sector workers make more on average than their private-sector counterparts. All of this extravagance deserves close scrutiny. Market-Based Pay and Benefits. According to current law, federal workers are to be paid wages comparable to equivalent private-sector workers rather than compared to all private-sector employees. While the official studies claim that federal employees are underpaid relative to the private sector by 20 percent or more, a 2016 Heritage Foundation study found that federal employees received wages that were 22 percent higher than wages for similar private-sector workers; if the value of employee benefits was included, the total compensation premium for federal employees over their private-sector equivalents increased to between 30 percent and 40 percent.18 The American Enterprise Institute found a 14 percent pay premium and a 61 percent total compensation premium.19 Base salary is only one component of a federal employee’s total compensation. In addition to high starting wages, federal employees normally receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment (available to all employees) and generous scheduled raises known as step increases. Moreover, a large proportion of federal employ- ees are stationed in the Washington, D.C., area and other large cities and are entitled to steep locality pay enhancement to account for the high cost of living in these areas. A federal employee with five years’ experience receives 20 vacation days, 13 paid sick days, and all 10 federal holidays compared to an employee at a large private company who receives 13 days of vacation and eight paid sick days. Federal health benefits are more comparable to those provided by Fortune 500 employers with the government paying 72 percent of the weighted average premiums, but this is much higher than for most private plans. Almost half of private firms do not offer any employer contributions at all.
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.