Biden wants to make sure Congress doesn't slash pay for firefighters tackling wildfires raging across the country

• The Biden administration wants additional funding from Congress for Ukraine, extreme weather, and the border.
• The Office of Management and Budget said 20,000 firefighters could see pay cuts this fall.
• Currently, wildfire firefighters are working under a temporary pay increase, which will expire by October.

As disastrous wildfires ravage the country, the firefighters helping combat them could see their pay slashed in a matter of months. The Biden administration wants to make sure that doesn't happen.

On Thursday, the Office of Management and Budget released President Joe Biden's letter to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy requesting additional funding for Ukraine, the border, and emergency disaster responses — including a $60 million funding increase for the Agriculture and Interior Departments to support pay increases for wildland firefighters. The administration is also requesting $12 billion for FEMA to help replenish its disaster relief fund.

Currently, firefighters are working under a temporary pay raise funded through Biden's bipartisan infrastructure legislation. That law, in an effort to help combat retention and hiring issues, mandated that firefighter pay in hard-to-hire areas would increase by either $20,000 annually or 50% — whichever is less.

But that funding is only in place through the rest of the fiscal year. Per the OMB, that could mean over 20,000 firefighters could see pay slashed in October, with some making as little as $15 an hour.

"The administration is committed to building a more robust and resilient wildland firefighter workforce and fairly compensate wildland firefighters' difficult and dangerous work that they do. Each firefighter has put their lives on the line to protect our community," a senior administration official told reporters on a Thursday press call.

"We've seen bipartisan understanding of the need to provide firefighter pay to prevent a cliff," the official said.

That potential pay cliff looms amidst a summer of deadly wildfires and extreme weather. "Unprecedented" wildfires currently raging across Hawaii have left at least 36 people dead. Apartment buildings and acres of land in Texas have been felled by still-raging wildfires. With record heat and extreme weather here to stay — and likely only to worsen — more wildfires could be on their way.

At the same time, NBC News reports that should firefighter pay not permanently increase, thousands of wildfire firefighters could leave altogether — up to 50%, according to the National Federation of Federal Employees.

On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act, which would make pay increases for firefighters permanent. If pay increases expire, the lawmakers' press release said, "pay and benefit cuts would trigger a mass exodus of federal firefighters from the National Forest Service in the middle of the wildfire season this year."

"Wildland firefighters put their lives on the line and endure hellish conditions to protect our families - at the very least, they deserve a living wage and support for their mental and physical health," California Rep. Josh Harder, who introduced the legislation, said in a statement.

"When I found out these brave men and women weren't earning a living wage, I knew we had to do better," he continued. "Wildfire season is here, and we can't risk losing any more of our wildland firefighting force while more and more devastating wildfires put our homes at risk and make our air quality worse."