The House voted Wednesday to give federal workers a 2.6 percent raise, over the objections of most Republicans who said federal employees are already paid more on average than their private-sector counterparts.

Lawmakers voted 259-161 for the pay hike, which passed easily with the help of 29 Republicans. Every Democrat voted for the bill.

Democrats who introduced the bill framed their effort as a way to compensate workers sidelined without pay during a 35-day partial government shutdown, which they blamed on President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

“The Federal Civilian Workforce Pay Raise Fairness Act is an important step in treating federal employees with the respect they deserve and compensating them for the financial stress the Trump-McConnell shutdown has inflicted on them,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., a cosponsor of the bill.

President Trump in December froze nonmilitary federal pay and Democrats, now in the House majority, are eager to override the move.

Republicans argued that federal workers are already highly compensated. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said federal employees with college degrees make an average of 21 percent more than those with degrees in the private sector, and federal workers without degrees make more than 50 percent more than those without a government job.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said more than a quarter of the federal workforce earns more than $100,000 annually. He also argued that giving everyone a blanket raise sends a message that Congress doesn't care which employees are doing well, and which aren't.

"It says, it doesn't matter what kind of job you do," Meadows said. Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga., agreed.

“No, everybody doesn’t deserve a pay raise all the time,” he said. “There’s not a line in here to target those high performers,” or to “find those folks who just do not want to show up and serve.”

McConnell is unlikely to schedule the measure for Senate consideration. Still, the raise could become part of the upcoming negotiations on seven fiscal 2019 spending bills that Congress must pass by a Feb. 15 deadline.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., countered Republican arguments by saying the bill doesn't prevent the federal government from weeding out low performing workers. He called the GOP argument “an irrelevant distraction to the matter at hand,” which is the need to give the federal workforce a boost.

Raskin also dismissed arguments that the bill would increase the national debt, and said the Republican tax cut bill in 2017 would boost the national debt by $1.9 trillion, according to some estimates.

“That’s their attempt to distract everybody from the pay raise America’s federal workforce needs,” Raskin said.

Before it passed the House, Democrats defeated a GOP amendment to prohibit raises for federal workers who are delinquent on paying taxes.