Donald Trump is blocking back pay for as many as a million federal contract workers who lost wages during the recent government shutdown. Democrats have introduced legislation to pay those workers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, but “I’ve been told the president won’t sign that,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, because “I guess federal contractors are different in his view than federal employees.” So the provision isn’t included in the spending bills that will keep the government open.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have signed on to the Democratic plan to pay federal contract workers, but as we’ve seen again and again, that doesn’t matter. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell almost never does anything Trump wouldn’t like, and he’s definitely not going out on a limb for low-wage workers.
Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith and Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, both Democrats, naturally, introduced the legislation, of which they wrote in the Washington Post that “The federal government relies on these working men and women. And the failure on the part of politicians in Washington to do their jobs shouldn’t rob people of the financial security they’ve earned.”
While Republicans insist that back pay for contract workers is complicated and messy, Smith and Pressley disagree: “Federal agencies have already budgeted the money they would have used to pay these contractors had the shutdown not happened. And there’s already a mechanism in place to help contractors get reimbursed for other costs incurred during the shutdown.”
But Republicans want the companies with federal contracts to be made whole. The same can’t be said of working people struggling to get by.