It depends on what furloughed workers end up getting back

President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that some federal workers who were furloughed during the government shutdown won’t receive pay after returning to work.

The remark came hours after the release of a White House draft arguing that federal employees placed on unpaid leave are not guaranteed a return.

The memo, first reported by Axios and confirmed to NBC News by the White House, appears to clash with the Trump administration’s own recent guidance. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in a shutdown guidance sheet released last month, said definitively that furloughed workers would be paid retroactively once funding ends.

A federal law, which Trump signed after the last government shutdown in 2019, further says that furloughed U.S. government employees “shall be paid for the period of the forfeiture of credits.”

A White House official told Axios that the administration is concerned that this law does not automatically cover the pay of furloughed employees and that Congress must specifically appropriate these funds.

Trump, when asked at the White House Tuesday afternoon about back pay for these workers, said, “I would say it depends on who we’re talking to.”

Democrats – who Trump and Republicans blame for the shutdown that is now Day 7 – “have put a lot of people at great risk and danger,” the president said in the Oval Office alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

“But it really depends on who you talk to,” he said. “For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people.”

Trump added: “There are people who really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we will take care of them in a different way.”

When asked why he said some workers shouldn’t get their records, he said, “Ask the Democrats that question.”

The administration’s back-pay signaling was widely seen as an attempt to pressure Senate Democrats to vote for Republicans’ proposal for a shutdown bill that will resume government funding at current levels through the end of November.

The administration has previously warned that the shutdown will soon lead to thousands of federal workers being permanently laid off, rather than furloughed, as has been the case in past funding failures.

Asked Tuesday how many permanent jobs are on hold, Trump said he could say “in four or five days, if this continues to continue.”

“It will be substantial, and many of these jobs will never come back,” he added. “But you’re going to get a lot closer to a balanced budget, actually.”

Democrats pushed back against those threats, arguing that the administration has already tried to reduce the size of the federal workforce since Trump took office again in January.

They want any short-term resolution to include an extension of the enhanced premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire at the end of the year. Republicans, who hold a 53-seat majority in the Senate, need at least seven more votes to overcome the chamber’s filibuster.

The administration’s review of back pay provoked a fiery response from the American Federation of Government Employees, a major federal workers’ union.

“The frivolous argument that federal employees are not guaranteed bread and butter under the Government Employees Treatment Act is a clear misinterpretation of the law,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement.

“It is also inconsistent with the Trump administration’s own guidance a few days ago, which clearly and correctly states that furloughed employees will receive retroactive pay for time out of work as quickly as possible once the shutdown ends,” he said.

“As we have said before, the livelihoods of patriotic Americans serving their country in the federal government are not trading currencies in a political game,” Kelley said. “It’s time for these attacks on federal employees to stop and for Congress to come together, resolve their differences and end this shutdown.”