No back pay for you
Mister Populist is again finding a way to make sure workers get cheated out of their pay.
The Associated Press published a good overview, highlighting a variety of elements in the final package, but the Washington Post flagged a point of particular interest.
Lawmakers grappled with a series of last-minute disputes Wednesday as they sought to finalize the deal, including an ultimately unsuccessful push by Democrats to include back pay for thousands of federal contractors who were caught up in the last shutdown, and – unlike the 800,000 affected federal workers – have not been able to recoup their lost wages.
Alas, this isn’t too surprising. Democrats, led by Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), pushed a provision to include back pay for federal contractors as part of the spending deal, but when reporters asked Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) yesterday whether it would be included, the senator replied, “I’ve been told the president won’t sign that.”
But but but we’re told he’s a populist. Surely populists don’t approve of stealing from The People?
As Vox recently explained, in reference to those adversely affected by the shutdown, “Up to 580,000 contractors, including cafeteria workers, security guards, developers, and IT consultants, could be missing out on back pay because of the impasse, according to NYU public service professor Paul Light.”
Cafeteria workers and security guards – Trump stiffs them while billing us for his many many trips to his golf resorts.
I keep wondering what it takes to take the shine off of him in the eyes of the maga cultists… This may actually have a popularity backlash to some degree.
Trump has a history of not paying contractors. Why should that have changed just because he’s POTUS and the pay doesn’t come out of his own bank account?
Government workers are all part of the Deep State, working against the courageous Orange Swamp-drainer, whose suppoerters are unlikely (or unwilling) to differentiate between government workers and contractors. If they can prevent some of those government teat-suckers from actually sucking teat (just like welfare queens!11!!), while preventing something that Dems want – which, if Dems want it , is EVIL by definition – so much the better.
YNNB – the big problem with that argument (which I agree, Cheeto’s followers will not see) is that the contractors represent the free-market obsession with privatization. Turn over functions to the private sector, because private sector can do it with less money*, time, and corruption.
*Please do not jump all over me about this; I am channeling the many government agencies/conservative ‘thinkers’ I’ve been forced to listen to in my career. I have actually done analyses for the feasibility of using private contracts on some projects on which I have been involved. They have always come out to cost more private than public, and yet the mantra continues to be repeated, especially by those who have chosen to ignore the reality-based factual data in front of their face, using really real numbers, not estimates.
No jumping here. I’ve heard that line of argument on my side of the border, too. Our provincial (Ontario) government is now run by a right wing ideologue who uses this sort of rhetoric all the time. He’s trying to introduce more privatization into our healthcare system. He is a business owner and thinks government works (or should work) the same way.
I don’t know why this “argument” is so popular, either. I would think private sector services would always cost more because of (HELLO!) profit. Increased costs when things go wrong are passed on to the customer (unless there has been some clause stipulating otherwise). The private sector, last time I saw, was made up of falible humans, just like government. they are not magically exempt from the laws of Murphy or Parkinson.The efficiency and leanness of the private sector did not prevent the 2008 recession.