TRUMP APPOINTEES

in line for raises during shutdown.

WASHINGTON — While many federal workers go without pay and the government is partially shut down, hundreds of President Donald Trump’s senior political appointees are poised to receive annual raises of about $10,000 a year. The pay raises for Cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries, top administrators and even Vice President Mike Pence are scheduled to go into effect beginning today 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 Dec. 21 to fund multiple federal agencies, they allowed an existing pay freeze to lapse. The pay freeze for top federal executives was enacted by Congress in 2013 and renewed each year since then. The raises will occur because that cap will expire today without legislative action, allowing raises to kick in that have accumulated over those years but never took effect. The raises start with paychecks to be issued next week. Cabinet secretaries 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. Pence’s pay is scheduled to rise from $230,700 to $243,500. He told reporters Friday afternoon he would turn down the raise. An administration official later said Pence’s staff believes he has to accept the raise during the shutdown and pay taxes on it, but will reimburse the Treasury or donate the pay to charity. It was unclear whether the White House had the authority to stop the increases. Trump was asked by a reporter Friday whether he would consider halting the raises, or halting them during the shutdown. “I might consider that,” Trump said. “That’s a very good question.” Later Friday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the pending pay raise “is another unnecessary byproduct of the shutdown. The administration is aware of the issue and we’re exploring options to prevent this from being implemented while some federal workers are furloughed. Congress can easily take care of this by funding the government and securing our borders.” However, the pay freeze has been an issue of dispute between Republicans and Democrats since at least October. Trump offered no raise to rank-and-file civil servants for 2019, prompting an outcry from Democrats and federal employee unions. Republicans offered to scrap the executive pay raise in return for agreeing to a 1.9 percent raise for civil servants. But those negotiations got stuck in a conference committee before the shutdown. The government payroll system has yet to implement the pay raise for executives including the vice president, a congressional aide said. But given the hardships the budget impasse imposes on the rest of the country, “the optics of this are not pretty,” said Jeffrey Neal, a former personnel executive at the Department of Homeland Security and now a senior vice president at ICF. Some 800,000 federal employees, out of a workforce of 2.1 million, are in unpaid status because of the partial government shutdown that began last month. Of those, about 380,000 have been furloughed. Many others are working without pay, and just before New Year’s, Trump ordered a pay freeze for most federal workers, working or not. “I suspect the president isn’t aware of the disparity — that political appointees will get a pay raise and no one else will,” said John Palguta, former career executive in the federal government for human resources. “It’s going to be seen as terribly unfair.” The government’s Office of Personnel Management did not respond to a request for comment.