President Obama announced plans to freeze the pay of the estimated 12,000 civilian employees on base.
"Small businesses and families are tightening their belts. Their government should too," said President Obama.
WHIO-TV reviewed the most recent financial disclosures and found calling off what was supposted to be a 1.4 percent raise, will cost the Dayton region $14 million this year and $14 million more next year.
Hundreds of miles from Wright Patterson, the head of the Washington-based American Federation of Government Employees, which represents thousands of those local civilian workers, said he is lobbying senators to block the freeze.
On the union Twitter page and Facebook, John Gage is urging workers to write their senators and protest the wage freeze.
Gage said it's not just about money, "It reinforces some ugly smear campaign against federal employees that we're overpaid, which we are not."
However, a freeze on government employee pay does have widespread political support, particularly among newly elected congressional leaders who were backed heavily by Tea Party groups who've been protesting fat reductions in government spending.
U.S. House leaders signed off on the plan Wednesday. The Senate is next.
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said, "I don't think you just unilaterally say pay freeze without looking at the contracting and other things that go on there."
Sen. Brown said in other words, he doesn't want the military shifting work to contractors while at the same time, freezing the pay of government workers.
Dayton Republican Congressman Mike Turner issued a statement about the pay freeze at Wright Patterson. "We must reduce federal spending to prevent a crushing debt from being passed down to our children and grandchildren. I hope that this step is part of a larger effort to put the federal government's financial house in order," said Turner.
Senators have until New Year's to take the final vote and make the pay freeze a law.