The Maximum Isn't Enough for Some Executives

A career executive in the federal government, earning the maximum salary allowed by law, draws an hourly wage of $80.50.

That's not shabby, but it underscores the old saying that people do not go into public service expecting to get rich.

Surveys suggest that most federal executives are committed to the "mission" of their agencies and accept the notion that they will never be paid as much as their counterparts in the private and nonprofit sectors. A recent government-wide survey found that 73 percent of senior executives were satisfied with their pay.

Still, many federal executives and judges say the government's salary scales are falling too far behind those for corporate leaders and even university presidents and deans. Questions of equity also are being raised as the government's patchwork pay system allows some agency leaders to be paid less than their senior staff.

Many of these issues are not new, of course. In 2003, the National Commission on the Public Service, headed by Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, sounded an alarm over federal executive and judicial pay. The commission suggested using law school deans as a benchmark for setting judicial pay and supported raising salaries for federal executives to levels comparable with those of executives in nonprofit organizations.

The commission's recommendations came two years after Congress doubled the salary of the president to $400,000 a year. Advocates for higher federal pay hoped that raising the chief executive's salary would ease political obstacles to increasing federal executive salaries, but that was not the case.

Most federal executive and judicial pay is capped by law. In most years, Congress raises the salaries of rank-and-file federal employees and adjusts the pay scales for other categories of government workers. But Congress has balked at giving itself a raise six times since 1994, with the result that judges and some executives have not kept pace with inflation.

Today, members of Congress and federal district judges are paid $165,200. Cabinet secretaries are paid $186,600, and lower-ranking presidential appointees are paid $136,200 to $168,000.

The average annual pay for a member of the Senior Executive Service is about $155,000. The SES pay scale ranges from $111,676 to $168,000.

SES members are the government's top managers and technical experts, and are usually in charge of day-to-day operations. There are about 7,000 of them, and some are political appointees. Their total compensation, pay and bonuses, cannot exceed the salary of the vice president, $215,700.

Congress has shown some flexibility, however, by allowing some agencies to pay higher salaries to their most valuable employees. The Veterans Affairs Department may pay doctors up to $295,000 or obtain waivers to pay more, such as the $384,683 currently paid a transplant surgeon. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency pays $219,500 to an examiner in charge of a large bank, and the Securities and Exchange Commission pays $215,700 to key supervisors.

But some parts of the executive pay system are out of whack.