COLA bill for judges died in Congress.

Don't be surprised if the next federal judge you see is a little testier than usual.

Yet another attempt to win from Congress a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for judicial salaries died Thursday night.

Here's how it fell apart. Prospects seemed good for a fleeting moment earlier this week. Without much fanfare the House had passed a 2.9 percent COLA for judges as part of the carmakers’ bailout on Dec. 10. And since the Senate had passed it as stand-alone legislation Nov. 20, that sounds like passage by the required two houses of Congress, right? No, because the different ways in which the adjustment was enacted did not leave the president a single clean judicial-COLA-only bill to sign.

So to seal the deal, the Senate yesterday had to pass what the House had passed Wednesday -- an iffy proposition because Senate Republicans were balking at the automakers' bailout bill in which the COLA provision was included. But even before the Senate killed the bailout, the judges' COLA got into unexpected trouble. Some press reports on the House action portrayed it as a judicial "pay raise" that had been tucked into the House bill -- rather than an adjustment that barely keeps them even with inflation. The news reports, apparently, scared off the Senate.

Judges will try again for a COLA in January and will press to repeal the law that requires an affirmative annual vote for judicial COLAS. (It’s automatic for other federal workers.) But prospects for any substantial raises beyond the COLA appear to have fizzled with the economy. Judges will not be happy, and don’t be surprised if more speak out -- or leave. Peter Fay, a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, recently told a Florida bench-bar conference that “judicial salaries are an outrage. The situation is beyond embarrassment. It’s insulting.”

More from Legal Times.


Meanwhile, Senate who voted against auto bailout bill, voting 52-35, may pay the price:


Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher in his heyday, was scheduled to appear Sunday at a sports card show in Taylor, Michigan to sign autographs. “But Bunning was kicked off the schedule after he helped derail an auto-industry loan package in the Senate Thursday night.”