Trump Administration Officials Are Getting Raises During Shutdown
The government has been operating under a partial shutdown since December 21st, depriving 800,000 federal employees of their entire paychecks. Meanwhile, hundreds of senior Trump appointees are getting $10,000 raises, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
This was an accident. Maybe. In 2013, Congress passed a law capping the salaries of federal executives. The law has been renewed every year, but it wasn’t in 2018 because of the shutdown. The pay freeze will expire unless action is taken by Saturday. This will not happen, and so starting next week, everyone from cabinet secretaries to Vice President Mike Pence will see bumps in their paychecks. The raises were revealed in documents released by the Office of Personnel Management, which last week advised workers who won’t be seeing paychecks because of the shutdown to do manual labor for their landlords in lieu of paying rent.
The raises are just one of many side effects of Trump’s decision to hold the government hostage over a border wall, and he doesn’t appear to be letting it go anytime soon. His meetings with congressional Democrats have not been productive, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) reminded reporters Friday afternoon.
Link to tweet
The president has insisted he will not sign off on legislation that does not include more than $5 billion to fund the border wall, and House Democrats, led by new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), have been adamant that they will not include wall funding in a bill. “A wall is an immorality,” Pelosi told reporters as the House passed a continuing resolution that would have allowed the government to re-open as negotiations continue. “It’s not who we are as a nation. And this is not a wall between Mexico and the United States that the president is creating here. It’s a wall between reality and his constituents.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-administration-officials-raises-shutdown-775018/
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