The Scoop
As the government shutdown nears an end, the Trump administration has developed an agency-by-agency projection to get paychecks out to hundreds of thousands of federal employees who have gone without them, according to a memo reviewed by Semafor.
The administration projects that federal employee paychecks will go out beginning Saturday, and it aims to complete its list of payments by Nov. 19, according to the document. A senior administration official told Semafor the White House “has urged agencies to get their payments out expeditiously and accurately” so workers are not left “waiting longer than necessary.”
The roughly 12,400 affected employees working at the General Service Administration and Office of Personnel Management have a projected back pay processing date of Saturday, November 15. GSA and OPM paychecks “will only include base pay,” with corrections being “made in the next pay cycle.”
Paychecks for employees at the Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, and Veterans Affairs, as well as Army and non-Army civilian employees at the recently renamed Department of War, are projected to be processed on Sunday. The document notes that those paychecks “will include standard pay as well as payments” for things like overtime and hazard pay.
The Departments of Education, State, Interior, and Transportation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Social Security Administration are scheduled to send their paychecks — base pay only with corrections being made in the subsequent pay cycle — on Monday, according to the document. The list of affected employees for these agencies totals over 150,000.
For all of the above agencies, backpay processing will include pay from October 1 to November 1. The agencies whose missed November pay won’t be covered on the next check will be paid back for those days of the shutdown on a future check due to different payment processor schedules, the senior official said.
Back pay for a separate group of agencies covers the entire period of the shutdown, according to the document. Those agencies, with a projected processing date of Nov. 19, include the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, and Treasury, as well as the Small Business Administration.
Know More
The tentative pay schedule comes as Congress prepares to send Trump a deal to reopen the government on Wednesday night, after a record-breaking 43-day shutdown. The senior administration official said original projected pay dates were a few days later than the list Semafor reviewed, but that the White House pushed agencies to complete payments sooner.
The deal to re-open the government includes three full-year spending bills and an extension for funding through Jan. 30. Republicans have also promised a vote on extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies before the end of the year.
For affected workers, the administration’s payment list will come as a welcome relief — particularly after debate among Trump advisers over whether furloughed federal workers were entitled to back pay. Some federal workers had to rely on food banks and other relief during the shutdown.
Notable
- Trump proposed giving a $10,000 bonus to air traffic controllers who didn’t miss days while working unpaid during the government shutdown, the New York Post reported.