President
“It really depends on who you’re talking about, but for the most part, we’re going to take care of our people,” he told reporters at the White House. “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.”
The White House’s Budget Office led by
Marked pre-decisional and deliberative, the memo, from
Earlier:
It argues that furloughed employees can be paid only if the bill that ends the shutdown explicitly appropriates funds for that purpose. That was how Congress awarded back pay before making the process automatic in 2019. But an amendment to that law, passed days later, added language making clear that Congress still has to approve a bill ending the shutdown.
US Senator
OMB’s threat is the latest in a series of hardball tactics to put pressure on Democrats to approve a Republican measure that would mostly continue spending at current levels. The Trump administration has frozen infrastructure projects in states that voted Democratic in last year’s election, threatened to fire thousands of federal workers and has used agency website and out-of-office emails to blame “radical left Democrats” for the shutdown.
House Speaker
Democrats quickly refuted the memo.
“I think the law is clear,” US Senator
The American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley called the proposed White House plan “an obvious misinterpretation of the law” that is “inconsistent with the Trump administration’s own guidance from mere days ago, which clearly and correctly states that furloughed employees will receive retroactive pay.”
On Monday, Trump, who had stayed on the sidelines of the fray for days, said he was open to negotiating with Democrats over health care subsidies to bring an end to the funding standoff.
A short time later, however, he wrote in a social media post that “I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open.”
The president has repeatedly said that he would use the shutdown to fire thousands more federal workers, who are normally furloughed during government closures and brought back when they end. On Tuesday, Trump signaled that “substantial” layoffs could be days away.
“I’ll be able to tell you that in four or five days,” Trump responded when asked about layoffs. “If this keeps going on, it’ll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back.”
Trump’s apparent willingness to open negotiations unfolded as federal workers miss paychecks and opinion polls indicate that voters are more likely to blame Republicans for the funding lapse.
(Updates with Trump comment on layoffs in penultimate paragraph)
--With assistance from
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To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Megan Scully, Mario Parker
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