To the Editor:For years, federal employees have suffered the indignity and financial harm of having to work without pay or being furloughed without pay as a result of Republican-engineered shutdowns of the federal government. Now, to add insult to injury, the president has ordered a pay freeze for federal workers, a fair percentage of whom are not receiving any pay at all because of his partial shutdown of the government. The writer was a federal employee, an assistant United States attorney, during several government shutdowns. The $5 billion that President Trump is asking for is 1/880th of the estimated $4.4 trillion federal budget for 2019 . It’s about saying Democrats want open borders for drugs and criminals and rapists to enter the United States.

Source: New York Times December 31, 2018 18:56 UTC