As federal workers go without pay, Mike Pence is set to get raise of almost $13K tomorrow: report

Absent intervention by Congress to cancel or postpone them, senior staff members in President Donald Trump’s administration can expect raises of up to $10,000 starting on January 5, reports the Washington Post.

While as many as 800,000 federal workers have gone without pay for two weeks — and counting — Vice President Mike Pence and other officials can expect to see a boost to their income in their next paycheck.

According to the report, “The pay raises for cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries, top administrators and even Vice President Mike Pence are scheduled to go into effect … documents issued by the Office of Personnel Management and experts in federal pay,” state.

The Post notes that it was known before President Trump shut down the government in order to fund his wall, the pay increases would go forward without interruption due to a quirk in the law.

“When lawmakers failed to pass bills on Dec. 21 to fund multiple federal agencies, they allowed an existing pay freeze to lapse,” the report explains. “Congress enacted a law capping pay for top federal executives in 2013 and renewed it each year. The raises will occur because that cap will expire without legislative action by Saturday, allowing raises that have accumulated over those years but never took effect to kick in, starting with paychecks issued next week.”

Cabinet secretaries making $199,700 per year will see their pay jump to $210,700 annually; deputy secretaries will see an increase from $179,700 to $189,600.

Vice President Pence is in line for a raise of almost $13,000 — leaping from $230,700 to $243,500.

Meanwhile, nearly 800,000 federal employees are in unpaid limbo, about 380,000 of them having been furloughed, as others continue to work without pay.

“I suspect the president isn’t aware of the disparity – that political appointees will get a pay raise and no one else will,” explained John Palguta, a former executive in the federal government specializing in human resources remarked, before adding, “It’s going to be seen as terribly unfair.”

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