There is no salary without work. Donald Trump said Tuesday that federal officials suspended during the current budget impasse would not automatically receive their back pay, despite a law to that effect adopted during his first term.
More than 700,000 federal officials have been suspended for almost a week, when deep divisions in Congress between Donald Trump’s Republicans and the Democratic opposition prevented the adoption of a new budget before the deadline. Since then, each camp has blamed the other for this “shutdown.”
“I can tell you that the Democrats have put a lot of people in a very high-risk situation,” Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday, receiving Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the Oval Office of the White House.
The more than two million federal employees do not receive remuneration while the budget paralysis lasts, even those who must continue working.
Since the start of the “shutdown,” the Republican president has increased threats to fire federal officials if the situation persists.
And the media Axios revealed on Tuesday the existence of a note from the White House Budget Office (OMB), according to which federal officials in a situation of technical unemployment do not have the right to recover their back salaries once the budget paralysis has been overcome.
The OMB believes that a 2019 law, adopted at the time of the last “shutdown” to force the state to retroactively pay all public officials – even those who had not worked – only applied to this situation and not to future situations.
A “frivolous” argument, stated in a statement the main union of federal employees, the AFGE, which condemns “a manifestly erroneous interpretation of the law.”
Even in the conservative camp, some oppose this OMB position.
“It’s not for the president” to decide that, declared Republican Senator Ted Kennedy, a close ally of Donald Trump.
Source: BFM TV
