House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that he hopes federal workers receive their backpay, making it seem possible that they won’t—even though he knows federal law requires that they be compensated.
Speaking on the House floor, the Louisiana Republican suggested that there was new analysis that showed that federal workers furloughed during the government shutdown might not be entitled to backpay.
“I hope that the furloughed workers receive backpay, of course,” Johnson said immediately after, claiming that was why he and President Donald Trump had begged Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to spare federal workers from a government shutdown.
“We don’t want this to happen,” Johnson said.
But as Aaron Fritschner, deputy Chief of Staff for Representative Don Beyer noted on X, this was a blatantly dishonest gambit—and Johnson knew it. As Johnson’s own website states: “Under federal law, employees are entitled to back pay upon the government reopening.”
It seems that Trump’s administration may be preparing to withhold backpay from federal workers in the president’s latest ploy to force Democrats to abandon their fight for health care subsidies.
Axios reported Tuesday that a draft of a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget claimed that federal workers may not be entitled to just compensation after the government reopens, under the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act Trump signed during a previous shutdown in 2019.
“Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does. Our view is: No, it doesn’t,” one senior White House official told Axios. OPM’s draft memo claimed that the law had been previously misconstrued to ensure backpay to furloughed workers.
The White House claimed that an amendment to the law assuring workers will be paid “subject to the enactment of appropriations Acts ending the lapse” refers to when federal employees will be specifically appropriated funds by Congress, and not how it has always been understood as the completion of the shutdown. A joint resolution that accompanied the 2019 amendment said that the government would pay “obligations incurred.”
It seems OMB is preparing to move forward with holding federal employees’ pay hostage. Government Executive reported that OMB had quietly deleted a line from a document about Frequently Asked Questions During a Lapse in Appropriations that referred to the GEFTA rule that “employees will be paid retroactively as soon as possible after the lapse ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”
But OPM’s special instructions for agencies affected by a lapse in appropriations starting October 1, 2025, stated just the opposite. “The appropriate retroactive pay for periods of furlough and excepted work will be provided after the lapse ends, as required by law,” the instructions say.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, who helped write the 2019 backpay measure, told Government Executive the meaning of the statute was clear.
“The law is the law,” he said. “After the uncertainty federal employees faced in the 2019 Trump Shameful Shutdown, Senator Cardin and I worked to ensure federal employees would receive guaranteed back pay for any future shutdowns. That legislation was signed into law—and there is nothing this administration can do to change that.”
This isn’t the only dirty trick the administration has pulled to intimidate Democrats into submission. Trump has also threatened to execute mass layoffs amid the government shutdown. Administration officials have insisted that the Democrats forced the president’s hand, but the move is entirely in line with Trump’s agenda as outlined in Project 2025, and the president has touted the “unprecedented opportunity” to make sweeping permanent cuts to programs and departments that he doesn’t like.
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