WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said
he would freeze the pay of federal workers next year, saying the nation
can't afford the 2.1% raises that would have gone into effect without
presidential action.
In a notice to
Congress Thursday, Trump cited "serious economic conditions" in cutting
pay to civilian workers. "We must maintain efforts to put our nation on a
fiscally sustainable course, and federal agency budgets cannot sustain
such increases," Trump said.
It would be the first
pay freeze for civilian federal workers since 2011 to 2013, when
President Barack Obama instituted a three-year pay freeze as the nation
recovered from the recession.
But Trump's pay
freeze comes even as he touts a booming economy. "The news from the
Financial Markets is even better than anticipated," Trump tweeted just hours before announcing the pay freeze. "More good news is coming!"
Under
federal law, federal employees get cost-of-living raises every new year
– in addition to specific increases in high-cost cities called
"locality pay" – unless the president determines those raises would be
"inappropriate."
Among
the factors the president can consider: economic growth, unemployment,
various measures of inflation and the budget deficit.
The
federal budget deficit has grown 16 percent this fiscal year, the
result of a combination of Trump-supported tax cuts and military
spending, as well as increases in mandatory spending programs
like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The national debt – the
accumulation of those budget deficits – has increased nearly $1.6
trillion over the past year, to $21.4 trillion.
Congress
can override the president's pay freeze through legislation. This
month, the Senate voted of 96-2 to approve its version of a spending
bill that would fix across-the-board civilian raises next year at 1.9
percent.
Tony
Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, called
Trump's move "deeply disappointing" and an indication that the Trump
administration "simply does not respect its own workforce.”
The pay freeze comes less than a week after a federal judge in Washington overturned parts of three Trump executive orders attempting to curtail the power of federal labor unions and institute merit-based pay systems for federal employees.
U.S.
District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said Trump didn't have the power
to force changes to union contracts because they would violate the
collective bargaining rights federal employees have under the law.
source : https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/08/30/federal-pay-freeze-trump-cancels-2-1-percent-pay-raise-federal-workers-citing-budget-deficit/1145355002/
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