President Donald Trump has told Congress he is cancelling a pay raise that most civilian federal employees were due to receive in January, citing budgetary constraints.
Trump informed House and Senate leaders in a letter on Thursday.
He said that locality pay increases would cost 25 billion dollars (£19 billion), on top of a 2.1% across-the-board increase for most civilian government employees.
He blamed the costs and said: “We must maintain efforts to put our nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases.”
Trump said he was determined that for 2019 “both across-the-board pay increases and locality pay increases will be set at zero”.
