YIKES
You talk about stepping on a landmine for absolutely no reason well the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ran by Russell Vought did just that.
Earlier today OMB's website had a small change in it where in the FAQ part of a shutdown the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 was removed. This is the legislation that was signed into law to ensure all direct federal workers would get back pay even if they were furloughed. Then this afternoon a draft memo circulated by OMB came out.
In this draft memo an unusual reading of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 was used to argue that only federal workers deemed essential employees are automatically due back pay. To back it up the memo cited a specific line in the law that states furloughed workers will receive back pay
“subject to the enactment of appropriations Acts ending the lapse.”
Director Vought has become an increasingly public figure the last couple of months for those who did not already know about him. While law's are open to interpretation this attempt wildly misses the mark. Not only are there still a bunch of Congressional Members who worked to pass that law still in Congress but this blows up on the Republican's just as they were starting to gain pretty significant headway in flipping the optics of the Government Shutdown from a Republican issue to something entirely caused by the Senate Democrats.
If the Administration tried to move on this wording they would easily be sunk as the Bill Report for it addresses how it should be interpreted and so the Admin just took a huge L for absolutely no reason as the move has reenergized parts of the Democratic Party that were starting to grow weary.