Trump Threatens No Back Pay for Furloughed Workers

Watch Trump Threatens No Back Pay for Furloughed Workers - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Derek Wahlbach is here to talk us through. Where are we now when it comes to the shutdown, Derek?

00:06Well, David, look, we're right where we were. I wish I could tell you that it was something

00:11different and that there had been some big, you know, coming together of minds, but there just

00:16hasn't. You know, Congress is still stuck where it has been over this issue of health care subsidy

00:21money. We are seeing a couple of cracks in the dam, a little bit on both sides. Marjorie Taylor

00:28Green, the very, very hawkish right winger from Georgia, was probably the biggest one so far,

00:36said her kids, her adult children, have plans that their costs would double if this isn't done and

00:43criticized Republican leaders for, in her words, not having a plan to deal with her, not having

00:48communicated a plan to deal with this. But overall, we're still in a situation where the president

00:54is ratcheting up threats for pain on Democrats, suggesting that he may be able to withhold

01:02pay from federal workers. There is a substantial amount of question about whether or not that's

01:08something he can actually do. But that is the threat that's there. And hanging over all of this is a threat

01:15from Russ Vogt, the OMB director, to maybe, rather than furlough federal workers, which they are

01:21currently furloughed, to actually go through with permanent job cuts, trying to put pressure on

01:27Democrats. As is, we're waiting right now ahead of a key pressure point, I would say, of next week, when you

01:35really start seeing a lot of federal workers, particularly members of the military, may miss paychecks if this

01:41drags on long enough. We've also seen across the United States tonight, my time, some hitches in air

01:49traffic control with some staffing issues related to the shutdown delays, particularly very bad in

01:56Dallas and Chicago and in Nashville.

01:59Yeah. Wow, Derek, because there's already a lot of concerns around around safety in the skies in the U.S.

02:05right now. But I want to pick up on that point that you made around this possibility that people

02:09actually start to miss paychecks because in the reporting as well, and of course, no surprises,

02:14but if people do start to miss federal workers, start to miss their paychecks, opinion polls are

02:20already showing they're more likely to blame Republicans for this. So how big could the fallout

02:24actually end up being? Yeah, that's true, Bell. And, you know, you sort of look at this in terms of

02:31an economic problem that starts getting bigger. Look, I've said for days and days that these are the sort of

02:38things that start medium bad and then get worse over time. Right. And so you're talking about in

02:44places with heavy federal workforces, localized, real big economic problems, particularly in

02:52in, you know, the Washington, D.C. Metro in Virginia, in Maryland. And let's bear in mind, there is a key

03:00election coming up in Virginia where this is playing a major, major role, not to the favor of

03:07of the Republican, as well as in New Jersey, where Donald Trump, one of the ways to try and

03:13increase the potential pain on Democrats was to hold back some money from some key transit projects

03:20into New York City. Guess who takes those most New Jersey commuters? And so that's become an issue

03:26there. So you're already starting to see some of the political outflows of this starting to come

03:33into force. But make no mistake, the worse, the longer this goes, by far the worse that this gets.