A bipartisan group of lawmakers want to ensure the U.S. Secret Service is able to retroactively compensate agents who have put in long hours to protect President Trump and his family by raising current caps on their salary and overtime allowances, according to a Senate aide with knowledge of the effort.
The federal law enforcement agency has been forced to rapidly expend its resources due to a substantial increase in the number of White House family members under Trump’s administration and the frequency of their travel.
“You had a husband and wife that were at home with their two kids, and now you’ve got a president and first lady with one child at home and the rest of the family spread between here and New York,” a Secret Service spokesman Mason Bryman told the Washington Examiner Tuesday, explaining why the agency has maxed out less than eight months into Trump’s first term.
Agents traveling with Trump or his children often accrue overtime pay during the long hours they spend in the field, in addition to other miscellaneous costs the agency has struggled to cover. For Trump’s recent vacation at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., for example, the agency shelled out $13,500 in golf car rentals.
“The Secret Service estimates that roughly 1,100 employees will work overtime hours in excess of statutory pay caps during calendar year 2017,” Director Randolph Alles said in a statement Monday, noting that an “overall increase in [the agency’s] operational tempo” has contributed to the problem.
For the agency to pay agents above the current $160,000 cap on earnings, Congress must act.
Democratic and Republican legislators who voted for the $1 trillion catchall spending bill in May, which earmarked $60 million for Secret Service, are working closely with Alles to raise the caps to $187,000 through 2020.
“The senator and her staff are very well aware of this problem, have been in talks with the Secret Service, and expect there to be bipartisan legislation to address this,” an aide to Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told the Examiner.
Two more congressional aides said the House Oversight Committee is working to extend a waiver for the pay caps that it granted last year, in addition to considering legislation that would provide for overtime pay every year instead of election years, when Secret Service agents are typically assigned to travel with and protect both major-party nominees.
“Unfortunately, there are agents who are due upwards of $30,000 and probably won’t see that money even if Alles is given authority to raise the pay cap,” one of the aides said.
While the Secret Service has struggled to pay its agents, congressional aides said another problem has persisted: The agency’s slim budget has prevented it from hiring additional staff to cut down on overtime.
Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth told a House panel in June that the agency needed “1,700 more [personnel] than they currently have [and] the president’s budget asks for 450 more” in fiscal year 2018.
“Secret Service will continue to be challenged by the lack of HR staff, which lengthens the hiring processes. At the end of 2015, 32 percent of HR positions at the Secret Service were vacant, and until they’re able to get their hiring right, they will continue to be understaffed, which will exacerbate the problems, which will lead to greater attrition,” Roth had said in his testimony.
“If they had the money and resources to hire more people, it would probably mean fewer agents were being stretched thin and fewer would get overtime,” said one the congressional aide.
The agency has already hired 800 staffers this year and is set to run out of money in September, unless lawmakers moves to raise the pay cap. Congress will have just 12 legislative days before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
