Presidential Memorandum, December 22, 2010: “On November 29, 2010, I proposed a two-year freeze in the pay of civilian Federal employees as the first of a number of difficult actions required to put our Nation on a sound fiscal footing. As I said then, Federal workers are not just a line in a budget. They are public servants who, like their private sector counterparts, may be struggling in these difficult economic times. Despite the sacrifices that I knew a pay freeze would entail for our dedicated civil servants, I concluded that a two-year freeze in the upward statutory adjustment of pay schedules is a necessary first step in our effort to address the challenge of our fiscal reality. The Congress responded to my proposal by including such a freeze in the Continuing Appropriations and Surface Transportation Extensions Act, 2011 (H.R. 3082), which I signed into law today (the “Act”). The Act freezes statutory pay adjustments for all executive branch pay schedules for a two-year period. It also generally prohibits executive departments and agencies from providing any base salary increases at all to senior executives or senior level employees, including performance-based increases.”