Raises for top US officials suspended

WASHINGTON — Federal agencies have been told to suspend pay raises for top Trump administration officials after an uproar from critics who said it was unseemly to reward top political appointees while hundreds of thousands of workers are going without pay during the partial government shutdown.

The raises had been set to go into effect on Sunday, after a long-standing pay freeze for senior officials lapsed.

The turnabout on the pay hike came late Friday in a memo from Margaret Weichert, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. The pay freeze for senior officials, she said, should be extended.

“[It] would be prudent for agencies to continue to pay these senior political officials at the frozen rate,” Weichert wrote in a memo to the heads of executive departments and agencies.

The Weichert memo followed a Washington Post story on Friday afternoon reporting that scores of senior Trump political appointees were poised to receive annual raises of about $10,000 a year.

Vice President Mike Pence’s pay was scheduled to rise from $230,700 to $243,500. Cabinet secretaries were entitled to a jump in salary from $199,700 to $210,700. Deputy secretaries were entitled to a raise from $179,700 to $189,600. Others affected are under secretaries, deputy directors and other top administrators.

The pending raises were a consequence of the budget impasse and government shutdown: When the budget deal lapsed, so did an existing pay freeze for senior federal officials. The pay freeze had been enacted by Congress in 2013 for top executives and renewed each year since then. It officially ran out on Saturday.

“Unless extended by new legislation, the pay freeze will end,” Weichert wrote to department and agency heads on Dec. 28.