Shutdown = Pay Raises for Trump Admin. Officials
They totally deserve pay increases. Best Presidential administration ever.
The pay raises for Cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries, top administrators and even Vice President Pence are scheduled to go into effect beginning Jan. 5 without legislation to stop them, according to documents issued by the Office of Personnel Management and experts in federal pay.
The raises appear to be an unintended consequence of the shutdown: When lawmakers failed to pass bills on Dec. 21 to fund multiple federal agencies, they allowed an existing pay freeze to lapse. Congress enacted a law capping pay for top federal executives in 2013 and renewed it each year. The raises will occur because that cap will expire without legislative action by Saturday, allowing raises to kick in that have accumulated over those years but never took effect, starting with paychecks that will be issued next week.
Cabinet secretaries, for example, would be entitled to a jump in annual salary from $199,700 to $210,700. Deputy secretaries would be entitled to a raise from $179,700 to $189,600. Others affected are under secretaries, deputy directors and other top administrators.
The pay of Pence is scheduled to rise from $230,700 to $243,500.
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“For a thing like this to happen, I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “It certainly smells fishy, just as the federal workforce is being furloughed.”
The options for Congress include taking no action and allowing the raises to occur, approving the legislation passed by the House Thursday or passing a standalone measure to retain the pay freeze. It was unclear Thursday whether the White House had the authority, if it wanted to, to stop the increases.
“It looks like Trump has protected his own appointees, and everyone else gets screwed,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), whose Northern Virginia district has 77,000 federal workers, said in an interview. He suggested the president fix the problem by immediately issuing an executive order canceling the raises.
There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.
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Originally Posted by ClydeR
