1 week ago
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As GOP’s government shutdown drags into its second month, the Trump administration is sending furloughed federal employees notices suggesting they may not be paid when it ends: “Once an appropriation or continuing resolution is enacted, excepted employees are entitled to receive payment.”
You will note it does not say “furloughed,” despite that appearing in the previous furlough notice. When a furlough goes beyond 30 days, agencies are instructed to treat it as a second furlough and send a new notice. This allowed the administration to continue signaling it intends to defy the 2019 law that requires furloughed workers to receive back pay once a shutdown ends.
The administration is perfectly aware of this, particularly because it was signed into law by one President Donald J. Trump during his first term. Indeed, they’re so aware of it that they tried to disappear it by deleting it from the Office of Management and Budget once they started floating the idea of permanently withholding back pay.
Guys, laws don’t go away because you delete information about them from a government website.
But just as the administration seems to believe that memory-holing the law makes it go away, it seems to think that if it just deletes the word “furloughed” from the notice, it magically means they don’t have to pay them.
President Donald Trump, shown on Oct. 31.Who are these “excepted employees” that will get paid? Theoretically, they are employees who have to report to work for emergencies, like disaster relief, but guess what: Agencies determine who is excepted. That allows the most favored employees to get paid, while the rest of the workers are stiffed.
However, the administration’s argument is also being undercut right now by … the administration?
Last week, in a federal court case about whether Trump could do mass layoffs during the shutdown, a Department of Justice attorney pleaded for mercy because of all the back pay the government has to give furloughed workers: “We're dealing with a class of employees who are furloughed, who are not working on specific government actions. They're incurring future obligations to the federal taxpayer, who will then have to pay back wages for these individuals who are not working.”
Trump loves hurting people, and he hates federal employees, so the shutdown has been an excellent vehicle for him to—as the head of OMB and all-around sociopath Russ Vought said—put federal workers “in trauma.”
And they are succeeding in that arena. Furloughed federal workers are lining up at food banks. That said, some very special workers sure are eating good. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents? Getting paid. Active-duty military? Hell yeah, here’s a paycheck. Border Patrol? Most definitely.
It’s not just federal employees that this administration wants to put “in trauma.” Right now, the administration is defying two court orders to pay out food-assistance benefits. And gosh, soon, they might run out of money to pay unemployment insurance—it simply can’t be helped.
Meanwhile, Trump is swimming in cash, hoovering up tens of millions of dollars in bribes to build his gilded ballroom.
Trump is making very clear who he values: people who will commit violence on his behalf, people who will help him wreak retribution, and people who will give him money.
The rest of us, as far as he is concerned, can pound sand.
