Kevin Hassett's logic that many government workers use their vacation days up over the holidays, so that the shutdown is actually a blessing in disguise.

Or something like that.

One sometimes wonders if these Trump people are even human beings.

Source: Politico

Federal workers furloughed because of the government shutdown might be “better off” after they return to work because they essentially are getting a free vacation, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said this week.

President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser made the suggestion in an interview on “PBS NewsHour.” He said many of the 800,000 federal employees affected by the three-week partial government shutdown had been planning to take vacation days around the Christmas and New Year holidays, and thus wouldn’t have worked during parts of the shutdown anyway — but now they get to keep their vacation days.

Hassett had been asked by PBS economic correspondent Paul Solman if he saw the shutdown of a quarter of the federal government — which is poised to become the longest in U.S. history at midnight — affecting the economy in the long term. He appeared to suggest that furloughing around 25 percent of federal employees would seem ominous.

“But then, when the shutdown ends, they go back to work and they get their back pay,” he said. “A huge share of government workers were going to take vacation days, say, between Christmas and New Year’s. And then we have a shutdown, and so they can’t go to work, and so then they have the vacation, but they don’t have to use their vacation days. And then they come back, and then they get their back pay. Then they’re — in some sense, they’re better off.”