The White House is wielding the new threat of no back pay for furloughed workers as a tactic to pressure Democrats to end the weeklong government shutdown.
The previous shutdown ended with legislation, known as the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, that required furloughed workers in future shutdowns be paid once the government is opened.
But that didn’t stop the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from issuing a draft memo this week raising the possibility that furloughed federal workers may not be entitled to checks missed during a shutdown.
Even Republican Sens. Thom Tillis (N.C.) and John Kennedy (La.) expressed severe doubts not only about the political wisdom of such a public stance, but about the administration’s legal ability to back it up.
“I think it’s a horrible message to send to people who are basically hostages right now to the Democrats shutting down the government, not agreeing to a clean [continuing resolution],” Tillis told reporters.
“I think it’s bad strategy,” added the outgoing GOP senator, who has broken with Trump on some issues and plans to retire at the end of his term.
“It’s not up to the president. I mean, his opinion matters, but Congress has got to appropriate the money. Read the Constitution,” Kennedy, who is generally not a critic of Trump, told reporters.
The new threat is part of a larger strategy from Trump and the White House to raise the potential pain to Democrats over a shutdown in the hope they will bend.
In some cases, that’s left Trump officials echoing Democratic messaging from previous shutdowns.
For example, White House officials have warned that troops may miss their next paycheck and that key programs that assist low-income families will run dry without a deal to open the government.
What’s different about the Trump approach is that it has included threats to punish federal workers, either by firing them during the shutdown or withholding pay.
In both approaches, Trump and his lieutenants have cast the blame on Democrats.
“I can tell you this: The Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy,” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with the Canadian prime minister when asked if the administration’s position was that furloughed workers should receive back pay.
“For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people,” Trump added. “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of. And we’ll take care of them in a different way.”
Even one of Trump’s closes allies, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), said Tuesday he hoped furloughed workers would receive back pay, though he argued there are “some legal analysts who are saying that that may not be appropriate or necessary.”
Whether any of this will get Democrats to bend is an open question. But so far, the minority party has been unmoved, digging in on demands for an extension to Affordable Care Act subsidies that will prevent increased premiums.
Senate Democrats on Monday blocked the GOP’s “clean” stopgap funding bill from advancing for a fifth time. More votes are expected this week.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday called a proposed short-term extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies as part of the effort to reopen the government a “laughable proposition,” despite some bipartisan support.
“The Democratic position has been clear: Permanent extension, and let’s go from there,” Jeffries said.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who represents a district with a high concentration of federal workers, accused the Trump administration of trying to frighten federal employees as a “negotiating tactic, which is despicable.”
“The President and Republican leaders should instead be using this time and effort to work with Democrats on a deal that reopens the government, protects Americans’ health care, and prevents huge price increases,” Beyer said in a statement.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the livelihoods of federal workers were not “bargaining chips in a political game.”
The threat of withholding back pay is an extension of the threat to fire or lay off workers.
Administration officials for more than a week been threatening to lay off swaths of government workers, something that has not been done during prior shutdowns.
“If this keeps going on, it will be substantial,” Trump said Tuesday of layoffs. “And a lot of those jobs will never come back.”
The president likened Democrats’ approach to the shutdown to a “kamikaze attack” Tuesday.
“They’re the ones that started it. They’re the ones that have — and it’s almost like a kamikaze attack by them. This is like a kamikaze attack,” Trump said. “They almost, they have nothing to lose.”
Source: The Hill