Rifts in Washington Deepen as Shutdown Drags On

Negotiations Around the government shutdown appear to be moving in the wrong direction as some Senators like Maine's Angus King reconsider their vote on Republican's clean continuing resolution. Comments made by President Trump claiming some furloughed workers may not get back pay irked Republicans, as they try to pin shutdown fallout on democrats. Bloomberg's Megan Scully reports.

Senate Republicans pushed back on a White House assertion that some federal workers may not receive back pay when the government shutdown ends.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Congress settled the issue when it enacted a law (Public Law 116-1) requiring that all federal employees receive back pay after government shutdowns end. That conflicts with a new stance by President Donald Trump’s administration, which has argued the back pay isn’t automatic for workers who are furloughed.

“Congress settled that issue in the 2019 law,” Collins told reporters Tuesday.

Collins proposed “a backup” measure, writing into any government-funding bill a provision “that says any obligations that were incurred during the shutdown are authorized to be paid.” That kind of provision was common in past shutdowns, when back pay wasn’t legally automatic. But it is not in the House-passed continuing resolution that has fallen five votes short of the 60 votes necessary in the Senate.

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 Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat and the vice chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that the law is “plain as can be” — that government employees are entitled to back pay. She called it “another baseless attempt to try and scare” federal workers.

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 Mike Johnson told reporters he wasn’t “read in” on the issue but said the legality of giving furloughed workers back pay is being discussed. Johnson said he hoped furloughed workers receive the money but blamed the uncertainty on Democrats’ refusal to support the Republican stopgap spending bill.

Democrats quickly refuted the memo.

“I think the law is clear,” US Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, told CNN Tuesday. “These federal workers will have their paycheck delayed, but if the Trump administration is now arguing that they’re going to eliminate the paychecks of those who are furloughed, that is an outrage. It is a violation of the law.”

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.

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