As hundreds of thousands of federal workers go without pay amid a government shutdown, Donald Trump’s political appointees are set to get raises of $10,000 a year.

The pay raises will go into effect for cabinet secretaries, their deputies, agency administrators and other senior officials, the Washington Post reported. The vice-president, Mike Pence, will receive a raise too.

The raises will kick in automatically on 5 January, unless there is legislation to stop them, according to office of personnel management documents obtained by the Post.

In 2013, Congress voted to impose a pay freeze on federal executives. It has renewed it each year. But when government funding was allowed to expire on 21 December 2018, leading to the partial government shutdown, the pay cap expired as well.

Raises that otherwise would have been due to top officials since 2013 will therefore kick in in their next paycheck.

Cabinet secretaries will get a raise from $199,700 to $210,700, while deputy secretaries will go up from $179,700 to $189,600, the Post reported. Pence’s salary will increase from $230,700 to $243,500.

About 800,000 federal workers are affected by the shutdown, which happened after Trump refused to approve government funding unless money to build a border wall was included. They are either put on leave or required to work without pay if their jobs are considered essential, and are set to miss their next paycheck.

Nita Lowey of New York, the new Democratic chair of the House appropriations committee, told the Post: “At a time when more than 800,000 federal employees aren’t getting paid, it is absolutely outrageous that the Trump administration would even consider taking advantage of the shutdown to dole out huge raises to the vice-president and its political appointees.”

At a Rose Garden press conference on Friday, Trump said he “might consider” blocking the raises, whether permanently or just during the shutdown. Pence said he would not accept his if the government was still shut down.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order eliminating a 2.1% raise for all federal employees that had been due to take effect in January.