Trump cancels pay raise for government workers, citing the ‘nation’s fiscal situation’

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Personal Liberty News Desk

President Donald Trump ruined the Labor Day holiday for some 1.87 million federal civilian union workers today when he announced that their scheduled pay increases will be rescinded.

“We must maintain efforts to put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course,” the President wrote in a letter to the House and Senate. “I view the increases that would otherwise take effect as inappropriate.”

“In light of our Nation’s fiscal situation, Federal employee pay must be performance-based, and aligned strategically toward recruiting, retaining, and rewarding high-performing Federal employees and those with critical skill sets,” the President wrote.

The move was quickly condemned by federal workers unions and leftist politicians who view the federal treasury as their own personal piggy bank. As reported by AJC.com:

“This is a deeply disappointing action and one more indication that this administration, in this economic environment, simply does not respect its own workforce,” said Tony Reardon, President of the National Treasury Employees Union.

“It is simply obscene that the same person who gave away massive amounts of money to corporations and billionaires in a tax scam now is crying that we don’t have enough money for pay raises for the Federal workforce,” said Will Fischer of the veterans group VoteVets.

“Trump sent the deficit skyrocketing to give massive tax breaks to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans, while working families got nothing,” the Democratic National Committee declared in a statement.

“Republicans gave corporations a trillion dollar tax cut and are now cutting pay raises for social workers, janitors, painters, clerical workers, and more,” said Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). “It’s outrageous.”

But what’s missing from the conversation is that many if not most of the federal workers actually got a “pay increase” as a result of last year’s Trump tax cut. It’s an increase that many folks, ourselves included, are seeing in our pay checks each week.

But it’s not surprising that the political class — which has no concerns for plight of the millions of middle class Americans who have been suffering under their policies and have been without significant raises for years and have seen their wages drop because of inflation — prefer average Americans pay higher taxes just so government workers can get fatter paydays.

It shows you whose side they’re on.