LEADER: Trump Freezes Raises for His Own Cabinet During Shutdown

And of course President Trump can't freeze his own pay because he's already working FOR FREE!  

Never forget that!

Here are more details, from the Washington Examiner:

The White House has frozen pay for Vice President Mike Pence and members of President Trump's Cabinet as the 14th day of the government partial shutdown was coming to a close. 

Top officials, which included secretaries and deputy secretaries, were set to get salary raises of roughly $10,000 that would begin to take effect Saturday because no legislation was passed to halt a pay cap set to expire Jan. 5. The White House announced Friday that it would freeze the raises shortly after Trump was asked about it by reporters earlier in the day. 

Pence’s salary was set to rise from $230,700 to $243,500, and Cabinet secretaries who made $199,700 were set to receive an increase to $210,700. The Washington Post was first to bring attention to the planned salary increases. 

Congress typically has passed a spending bill to prevent these types of pay raises to take effect, but lawmakers and the White House have been unable to come to an agreement on a spending bill for several agencies that has led to a partial government shutdown. The disagreement is over Trump's demands that Congress fund a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. 

And from the Straits Times:

The Trump administration announced late Friday (Jan 4) that it would freeze a pay raise for Vice-President Mike Pence, members of the Cabinet and other high-ranking political appointees in the light of the partial government shutdown. 

The high-level officials were positioned to receive a raise of about US$10,000 a year – which was to go into effect Saturday – as 800,000 federal employees were entering their third week without pay. 

The increases were the result of Congress’ failure to renew a long-standing freeze on raises for high-ranking officials and political appointees. An extension of the freeze was included in the spending Bills funding multiple government agencies that were not acted on before the expiration on Thursday of the 115th Congress. 

But on Friday night, the Office of Personnel Management announced that “it would be prudent for agencies to continue to pay these senior political officials at the frozen rate until appropriations legislation is enacted that would clarify the status of the freeze.”

The decision came during an unexpected optics issue for the Trump administration: While correctional officers, Transportation Security Administration agents and other federal employees work without pay during the government shutdown, Pence’s annual salary would have jumped to US$243,500 from US$230,700.

Cabinet secretaries who were paid US$199,700 a year would have seen their annual pay rise to US$210,700. It also came after The Washington Post reported the potential raises. 

The administration appeared to be aware of the perception problem and was trying to avoid it. Asked at his news conference Friday if he would freeze the raises during the shutdown, President Donald Trump said he “might consider that.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, later explained that the administration was “exploring options to prevent this from being implemented while some federal workers are furloughed” and described the situation as “another unnecessary byproduct of the shutdown” that she said could be remedied by Congress. 

The guidance issued Friday night by Margaret Weichert, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, stated that the 2018 pay freeze for certain political officials would be “generally applicable in applying the pay freeze in 2019.”

Weichert said in her memo that her department would put forward new guidance if and when Congress took action on the issue. 

Democratic lawmakers, who are at an impasse with Trump over his vow to not reopen the government without funding for a wall along the Southwest border, earlier Friday put pressure on the Trump administration, criticising the potential raises. 

Rep. David Price of North Carolina described increasing the salaries of high-ranking officials during a shutdown as “astounding and the height of hypocrisy.” Rep. Nita Lowey of New York said that the Bill passed by the House on Thursday to reopen the government would also block what she described as “lavish raises.”

That Bill, however, is viewed as a nonstarter in the Republican-controlled Senate. 

The Government Accountability Office had also received questions about whether the raises could move forward but responded that the issue was, so far, an unresolved legal question, according to a person familiar with the conversation. 

The salary increases would have come as the leaders of some of the unions representing federal workers criticised Trump for what they say is a lack of empathy for the financial problems facing federal employees who have not been paid during the shutdown.

At his news conference Friday, Trump confirmed that he had told congressional leaders that he was willing to keep the government closed, potentially, “for a very long period of time, months or even years.”

The freeze on raises for senior-level appointees was a measure that was initiated by House Republicans in 2013, during the Obama administration, as part of a financial services Bill. Under the provision, high-ranking officials would have their pay rates frozen, even though the federal schedule of pay raises would increase. That law has been renewed every year since. 

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In March 2018, Republicans tried to end the freeze, but Democrats succeeded in their efforts to keep it.

The Democrat-led House included a continuation of the executive pay freeze in a Bill the chamber passed late on Thursday to reopen parts of the government without the funding for a border wall Trump wants.

But that legislation is said to be dead on arrival in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he will not vote on a Bill the president will not sign.

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