Sponsors
Introduced January 3, 2025 by Claudia Tenney · Last progress January 3, 2025
The bill aims to reward and motivate higher performance among selected federal workers through metrics‑based pay and management reforms while centralizing oversight and limiting new spending, but it risks excluding many employees, creating pay volatility, administrative burdens, and incentives to prioritize measurable outputs that can harm service quality and fairness.
Federal employees in participating agencies (primarily GS‑11 through GS‑15 and SLs) can earn higher pay and bonuses tied to performance — including up to a 10% basic pay increase and discretionary bonuses — rewarding strong performers.
Federal employees will get clearer expectations, regular feedback, and training (annual metrics, quarterly sessions, required development for lower tiers), which can improve skills, productivity, and fairness of personnel decisions while improving public service quality.
Centralized OMB oversight plus standardized reporting to Congress and GAO creates a single accountability path and structured evaluation, enabling informed decisions about program continuation or changes.
Many federal employees will be excluded or have limited opportunity: the pilot limits eligibility to GS‑11 through GS‑15/SLs and caps participation at 1–10% per agency, leaving lower‑graded staff and most workers outside the program.
Participating employees face substantial pay volatility and downside risk: Tier 3 workers can face a mandatory 10% pay cut, participants may be barred from many Title 5 pay adjustments, and large pay changes tied to single annual evaluations increase income uncertainty.
The program creates incentives to prioritize easily measured outputs and to game or tailor metrics, risking inconsistent standards across agencies, short‑term behavior, politicized or uneven treatment, and harm to employee morale.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a five-year pilot tying pay for eligible federal employees to annual performance tiers with up to +10% or −10% basic pay adjustments, standardized metrics, and reporting.
Creates a five-year pilot that lets the Office of Management and Budget run a performance-based pay program for a limited share of federal employees. Eligible Executive agency staff (generally GS‑11 through GS‑15 and senior-level equivalents) would be assigned to one of three performance tiers each year, with up to a 10% pay increase for top performers, no pay change for those who meet expectations, and a 10% pay reduction for those who fail to meet metrics; agencies must adopt standardized metrics, provide training and feedback, report outcomes to OMB, and use existing funds to operate the pilot.