According to a report from Politico, some former appointees of Donald Trump’s have said that they’re struggling to pay their rent due to a lump sum of vacation payouts that was promised to them and have not been delivered. The outlet notes that there typically are problems with a government transition, but there are more problems with this transition than in the past. Politico interviewed seven former officials, and they explained that they were not given a heads-up of any significant delays with the payouts that they are owed for vacation days.
“I’m sitting here going, how do I pay my rent? How do I pay my cellphone bill?” one former Commerce appointee told the news outlet.
Another former Trump Commerce official told Politico: “I have enough money to make it a month, but when rent’s due next month, what happens then? Rent in D.C. isn’t cheap.”
And there is another problem, too.
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“Besides the vacation payouts, at least three former Commerce appointees haven’t gotten their separation packets that contain a document called the SF-50, which allows them to apply for unemployment benefits, according to another former Commerce appointee, who only just received his packet,” the report states.
Politico speculated that the reason for the delay in payouts could be the bumpy transition between Trump and Biden. Trump wasn’t cooperative with the incoming administration. In fact, he still hasn’t conceded the election that took place last November.
“It’s not known how widespread the payment delays are or the exact cause, but there have been other personnel hiccups during the transition, which was especially rocky because of former President Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge President Joe Biden’s win,” the outlet reports. “POLITICO previously reported that a number of Trump appointees unexpectedly lost their parental leave benefits when Biden was sworn into office.”
“While some Trump appointees have been able to land jobs on Capitol Hill or in the private sector, many of them are still looking, and one called the job market for Trump appointees “a little slow” and said that she’d received no offers yet,” the report adds.
Well, they knew what they were signing up for.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
