Asked Monday about a claim made by President Barack Obama regarding sequestration’s effects on Capitol Hill janitorial staff, White House spokesman Jay Carney pushed back against critics who accused Obama of telling a lie.
Obama on Friday suggested that janitors at the Capitol would be hit with a pay cut due to the automatic spending cuts that went into effect the same day. But the Washington Post’s chief fact checker Glenn Kessler obtained a memo from the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) saying that what the President said was not true. The memo said no furloughs were anticipated for AOC employees.
Carney highlighted that those employees would face a reduction in overtime which, he argued, is tantamount to a pay cut for someone who earns an hourly wage.
“On the issue of the janitors, if you work for an hourly wage and you earn overtime, and you depend on that overtime to make ends meet, it is simply a fact that a reduction in overtime is a reduction in pay,” Carney told reporters at an afternoon press briefing.
