Article publié par le Washinton Post le 3 janvier 2019
Pendant que Trump prend l’administration en otage, ferme le gouvernement et donc cesse de payer les fonctionnaires fédéraux, les séides autour de la Maison Blanche s’accordent une rallonge. Merci au Washington Post de dénoncer l’hypocrisie des populistes.
While federal workers go without pay,
senior Trump administration officials are poised
to get $10,000 raises
While hundreds of thousands of federal workers go without pay and the government is partially shut down, scores of senior Trump political appointees are poised to receive annual raises of about $10,000 a year.
The pay increases for Cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries, top administrators and even Vice President Pence are scheduled to go into effect Saturday without legislation to stop them, according to documents issued by the Office of Personnel Management and experts in federal pay.
The raises, for hundreds of appointees, including ambassadors, appear to be a consequence of the shutdown: When lawmakers failed to pass bills Dec. 21 to fund multiple federal agencies, an existing pay freeze lapsed. It was enacted by Congress in 2013 for top executives and was renewed each year since then. The raises will occur because that freeze will expire Saturday without legislative action, allowing the increases that accumulated over those years to kick in. 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.
President 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 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 the New Year, President 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.
The Democrat-led House included a continuation of the executive pay freeze in a bill the chamber passed late 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 (R-Ky.) says he will not vote on a bill the president will not sign.
[Congressional Republicans tentatively agree to raise federal worker pay, rebuffing Trump]
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, (MD), called the raises “outrageous” in a statement and called on McConnell to allow a Senate vote on the House measure, reopen government and provide retroactive pay to affected federal employees. The southern Maryland Democrat has more than 62,000 federal employees in his district.
McConnell’s office did not provide comment on the issue Friday.
The pay freeze’s expiration was discussed at length during a conference call Monday with officials at the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, who are meeting regularly to discuss issues caused by the shutdown. Some officials on the conference call, which included acting OPM Director Margaret Weichert, were worried about the public perception of the raises and discussed how to respond to questions about them, according to one participant, who requested anonymity to talk about internal discussions.
“It was definitely a ‘this is not going to look good’ situation,’” the participant said.
A senior administration official said the White House believes its likely Congress will act to reinstate the pay freeze when the federal government reopens.
What is Trump’s shutdown endgame?
The raises would cost taxpayers $300 million over 10 years, according to the Senior Executives Association, which represents the government’s approximately 7,000 highest-paid career officials.
The group’s executive director, Jason Briefel, called the freeze a “politically driven policy that over time makes it harder to bring good folks to government” and said extending it is detrimental to hiring top talent. But he acknowledged lifting it now “is definitely a slap in the face” to the rest of the federal workforce.
“At a time when more than 800,000 federal employees aren’t getting paid, it is absolutely outrageous that the Trump administration would even consider taking advantage of the shutdown to dole out huge raises to the vice president and its political appointees,” Rep. Nita M. Lowey, (D-N.Y.) the new chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, said in an email.
The shutdown has infuriated the unions that represent federal workers.
“It is wonderful that the president has decided to lift the pay freeze for top executives and his political appointees: They deserve a pay adjustment, as do all the people who work under them,” J. David Cox Sr., national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 750,000 federal workers, said in an email. “Leadership is about the principle that ‘officers eat last.’ The administration should make sure that the rank and file receive a pay adjustment before their bosses do.”
The mechanics of getting the raises into appointees’ paychecks also is complicated by the shutdown, federal personnel experts said. The adjustments must be processed by each agency’s human resources department, which depending on the agency, may not be staffed during the lapse. So some executives could see fatter paychecks starting next week while others would have to wait until the government fully reopens.
“For a thing like this to happen, I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “It certainly smells fishy, just as the federal workforce is being furloughed.”
The options for Congress include taking no action and allowing the raises to occur, approving the legislation passed by the House Thursday or passing a standalone measure to retain the pay freeze.
“It looks like Trump has protected his own appointees, and everyone else gets screwed,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), whose Northern Virginia district has 77,000 federal workers, said in an interview. He suggested the president fix the problem by immediately issuing an executive order canceling the raises.
Late Friday, in response to a report on the raises in The Washington Post, Weichert issued a memo directing federal agencies to stand by and not move forward with the increases until Congress acts “to provide clarity on the matter.”
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Pour fêter les 66 balais du frangins, nous avions prévu de nous réunir, les huit convives, au restaurant. Compte tenu de la fort fâcheuse habitude d’ici de noyer toute forme de convivialité dans un tintamarre insupportable, avec Susan, sans prévenir quiconque, nous avons décidé que le restaurant serait au 32ième étage du Water Garden, l’immeuble dont elle occupe un appartement.
Au menu un Carré d’Agneau, des haricots verts frais assaisonnés avec un beurre d’ail maison, dessert à l’avenant, le tout arrosé d’un Blanc de Blanc de qualité.
Vêtu d’un seyant tablier, œuvre de Carole pour le Noël de son dabe, lors de la vérification de l’avancement de la cuisson, le frangin joue contre Susan à l’arroseur arrosé en prenant le photographe en photo.
Le premier qui est capable de relier de façon logique Religion et Science mérite le prix Nobel d’épistémologie.
Susan aura remplacé Hilary qui était la cible.
Et voila, encore un accroc à la démocratie.
Iguane rencontré lors d’une balade le long de la New River.
La balade creuse les estomacs, la préparation d’un dîner léger pour deux réglera le problème.
Festin servi dans des assiettes chaudes.
Chaque premier dimanche du mois, sur les rives de la New River, se tient un rassemblement qui n’a pas son pareil en France. Autour de quelques orchestres se regroupent des associations genre Asso 1901 ainsi vendeurs de bijoux et autres bimbeloteries.
Asso musicale fait sa pub en silence pour éviter les fausses notes.
Mais aussi club de ski fait la sienne de pub. Elle ne propose pas du ski nautique mais du ski sur neige. Bon, c’est vrai on ne skie pas en Floride, alors ce club organise, une fois par an, une virée d’une semaine dans les Montagnes Rocheuses.
Musique donc, pour faire dans l’euphonie, ici ça swingue.
Un Big Band d’étudiants avec un répertoire genre Duke Elington, la classe.
Profiter de la musique tout seul dans son coin ne correspond pas à l’idée que l’on peut se faire d’une telle réunion. Mon pote Claude et son épouse se sont joints à nous.
Toutes les rencontres ne sont pas vêtues avec distinction.
Et comme nos amis américains sont parfaitement organisés, ils le font savoir et utilisent, dès que possible, des tournures françaises.
Une fois la balade terminée, nous rentrerons à la maison pour un déjeuner en toute simplicité autour d’une omelette.
Sans une bonne organisation, il n’est point de Fêtes réussies.
Le sourire de la jeune génération, celui de Beth, ouvre les festivités et donne le ton.
La mine réjouie des anciens aussi.
Le pillage du buffet peut enfin débuter. Susan craignant de manquer avait prévu de nourrir, pardon GAVER tout Fort Lauderdale.
Dans un premier temps, chacun prend place, certains debout, d’autres assis.
Sous l’effet euphorisant des vins soigneusement choisis, l’absence de mal à la tête le lendemain le prouve, le plancher chavire sous les pieds de la photographe.
Après un moment de doute sur l’horizontalité du plancher, les choses rentrent dans l’ordre.
Les plus futés poursuivent la soirée sur la terrasse. Et ils ont bien raison, un agréable courant d’air rafraîchit l’atmosphère.
Peu avant Minuit, une conférence au sommet se tient en aparté.
Les résultats de cette rencontre créent d’un côté la jouissance d’une bouffée d’air frais et de l’autre un heureux étonnement, une joie impossible à masquer.
Arrive Minuit, les convives se regroupent sur la terrasse.
Pendant ce temps, d’autres admirent les feux d’artifices.
Vers 1:30 du matin, il n’est de bonne compagnie qui ne se quitte, la fête doucement se termine.