White House proposal to withhold federal workers’ back pay is more rhetoric than reform

Several legal scholars seem to hold a similar view to Murray. Jeremy Dalrymple, associate director of the R Street Institute’s Governance Program, tells Reason that “OMB’s memo offers a novel and legally defensible reading of the statute, but one that departs from both congressional intent and settled administrative interpretation.” Dalrymple contends that while the statute initially left some ambiguity over how furloughed workers would be compensated, Congress amended the law days after it was passed by introducing the phrase “subject to the enactment of appropriations Acts.” He notes that this language is not intended to serve as a limitation, but as a timing safeguard to ensure that back pay would be issued once funding was restored. “OMB’s new reading reverses that understanding, treating the clarification as a restriction rather than a safeguard.”