FEPCA was enacted to provide guidelines to achieve pay comparability between Federal and non-Federal jobs.
The most far reaching provisions of the Act were to change the way pay is set for the General Schedule and to maintain comparability by locality.
It also called for establishment of the following special pay plans: Senior Level (SL) employees (non-supervisory and non-managerial employees classified above grade 15 of the General Schedule), administrative law judges (AL), members of the Boards of Contract Appeals (CA), certain law enforcement officers, employees in the Senior Biomedical Research Service, and police of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the United States Mint.
Both Republican and Democratic administrations have complained about the methodology used to compute locality adjustments and the projected cost of closing the pay gap (as determined by FEPCA) between Federal salaries and those in the private sector.
In reality, the final pay raise has been decided by Congress, which may authorize higher or lower increases than what were originally requested by the President in his annual budget submissions.