Diplomatically Trying to Close Overseas Pay Gap

That kind of talk could make a diplomat get very undiplomatic.

But John Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association, knows how to keep his cool (which should come in handy when he's transferred to Iraq next year).

Closing the gap is not a pay raise, he said calmly. "It's fixing an unintended inequality."

Naland doesn't quarrel with Coburn's right to oppose legislation closing the gap, "but his hold is preventing his 99 colleagues from voting," Naland said. "That's just the way the Senate works nowadays."

He does quarrel, however, with Coburn's notion that foreign service officers are seeking huge raises on top of other big benefits. It's true that diplomats get a housing allowance and, in some cases, dangerous duty or hardship duty pay. But that doesn't negate the need to close the gap, especially for lower-level diplomats.

Senior foreign service officers get those same benefits, but their pay is not reduced by the locality amount when they go abroad. That cut applies only to the junior and mid-level diplomats.

Furthermore, Naland said, the "allowances were never meant to obviate the need for the basic locality pay adjustment that all other federal employees get."

That's what upsets foreign service officers -- working cheek by jowl with colleagues from the CIA, who might pretend to be foreign service officers, and other agencies whose pay is not cut when they leave the D.C. area.

"It becomes an equity issue," Keller said.

And foreign service officers don't have the option of staying in D.C. They spend most of their careers outside the country.

The issue is compounded when a diplomat takes his family abroad because the family often loses the spouse's income, too. Sonja Keller had a growing career as a journalist and public relations officer when Michael was sent to the Central African Republic.

"The financial impact was significant," she said.