Congress passed a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown and prevent overseas federal employees from seeing a 22% cut in pay.

The House and Senate approved a continuing resolution on Wednesday to extend current government funding levels through Dec. 20.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said congressional leaders agreed to a clean CR Tuesday night, with no “poison pill amendments” that could delay its passage.

“This is a good outcome for the country. There will be no shutdown, because finally, at the end of the day, our Republican colleagues in the House decided to work with us,” Schumer said on the Senate Wednesday. 

The continuing resolution also extends Overseas Comparability Pay, a critical source of funding that narrows the basic pay disparity between federal employees based in Washington, D.C. and those serving overseas.

For the past 15 years, members of the Foreign Service serving abroad received up to two-thirds of locality pay for the Washington, D.C. metro area through OCP.

Congress, however, needed to reauthorize OCP before the start of fiscal 2025 to avoid a roughly 22% pay cut for 11,000 federal employees who spend most of their time overseas.

Lawmakers previously kept OCP funded through the annual appropriations process, but last reauthorized the funding through the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, with a deadline of Sept. 30, 2024, to reauthorize funding, according to a source familiar with congressional deliberations. 

Lawmakers are also looking at a longer-term extension of these funds.

A “manager’s package” of amendments to the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, introduced last week by top Senate Armed Services Committee members and approved by Senate leadership, would extend Overseas Comparability Pay through the end of fiscal 2026.

Under both bills, eligible federal employees will still receive two-thirds of locality pay for the Washington, D.C. metro area.

Tom Yazdgerdi, president of the American Foreign Service Association, said the continuing resolution provides a “collective sigh of relief” for the group’s members.