If President Obama wants to give federal employees a pay bump next year, he may have to do it without Congress' help.

In his fiscal 2013 budget request, Obama included a 0.5 percent pay raise for federal employees, who have been under a salary freeze since 2010. But House appropriators did not include funds for the raise in the financial services and general government spending bill -- and the Senate appears to be heading the same way.

The Senate Appropriations Committee released a summary of the bill Tuesday, with no mention of the raise. Committee staffers were unable to confirm yesterday whether the bill includes money for a modest federal pay increase.

The full text won't be released until after the panel meets today to mark up the bill, which funds the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission and a half-dozen other agencies. It is usually the vehicle for governmentwide pay raises, though Obama can enact a raise without it if he's able to find alternate funding.

A two-year pay freeze -- implemented by Obama in 2010 -- ends next year. But Republicans have repeatedly suggested extending the freeze, along with cutting what they see as an overgenerous benefits package. Democrats and federal employee unions, meanwhile, have argued that government workers have contributed enough.

But that doesn't mean Democrats will prioritize funding a pay raise, especially when they're fighting to fund a slew of programs during a fiscally tight year. The limits of employee-friendly lawmakers were evident earlier this year, when Congress partially paid for a payroll tax holiday by requiring new federal employees to pay almost four times as much for retirement benefits as their colleagues do (Greenwire, Feb. 23).

Overall, the Senate's financial services bill is a 5.8 percent increase over this year's appropriation. It is unclear whether any lawmaker will offer an amendment today to include funds for the raise, since the bill comes out of a Democratic-led subcommittee. Several Democratic staffers said they were not aware of any; Republicans were not planning to offer any amendments related to the federal workforce as of yesterday, either.

Schedule: The markup is today at 10:30 a.m. in 106 Dirksen.