Government shutdown, AKA DC Congress Crazy

BrettGlass

So, how many DC-monkeys have been furloughed due to the crisis manufactured by intransigent members of Congress? What are you doing with your sudden (and, fortunately, probably paid) vacation?

Fizzgig

It's not just DC.  Mom's still coming with me, but this is the last cruise for a while.  Between the earlier 20% hit to her pay and the Feds saying an IOU is good enough (aka, she still has to go to work), I asked her to apply where I work...  we at least PAY our employees.

jackdaniels

Which is exactly what Tea Partiers want, more distrust of the federal government.  Interesting how you can win an election based on the idea that the federal government is useless and then prove it by being useless in the federal government.

Angelastic

I think I missed something; why are people suddenly getting paid vacation and unpaid work days?

autojim

@Angelastic: The TL;DR version: the extreme elements (and their more mainstream colleagues who have to appease the very vocal extreme to win re-election) on one side of the aisle are holding the Federal budget hostage until the administration and the other side of the aisle capitulate and defund the adminstration's cornerstone health care reform legislation. Result: no budget = most Federal government agencies and employees don't work, and those who have to work in high-priority positions (immigration & customs, law enforcement, military) won't get paid for a while, same as some not-as-high-priority positions (who are funded through grant and private donation money, are still required to work, because their funding isn't tied to the Congressional-approved budget), but of course the people who process their payroll and put the direct deposits together are on furlough, so there's no one to get the money they earn to them.

And the TL;DR of the TL;DR is "enough of our elected officials in Congress have chosen to behave like 4-year-olds who don't get their way in the toy store that they've made a right mess of things".

midnitesnoopy

This is very frustrating. I like pictures, so heres a link to an infographic from the washington post : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/diversify-economy/?hpid=z2 I live in the spot in Colorado, where we have a higher percent of military/government workers than anywhere else. I am lucky that I am not affected directly yet. But my roommate, friends, classmates are all either defense contractors or civilians on furlough or active duty trying to make up for the civilians that are out.

Soupskin

Well said, @autojim

Read an article on Forbes about how the WIC program has about a week of funding before leaving pregnant women and babies without food and formula.

thefuzzyslug

@Angelastic, let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. (And by me, I mean, Hank)

http://youtu.be/PTJubcZFA78

Let's hope the more sensible congress people (yeah, I know, crazy talk) slap their less sensible compatriots into stopping all this nonsense before the effected private sector employees are out of work, or working for IOUs, for much longer.

glenra

@Angelastic, I like Hank's vid but have an addendum, which is that all the newspeople hyperventilating about how awful this is and how it proves that the Tea Party Republicans are uniquely evil have forgotten how often this used to happen. This whole "shutting down the government" thing happened 12 times during the era when democrat Tip O'Neil was facing republican president Ronald Reagan - one of those was a (failed) attempt to restore the Fairness Doctrine.

The way it works is: side A says "we need to pass a budget bill really soon!" Side B replies "Not unless you fix this thing we're whining about right now!" Then both sides posture about how UNREASONABLE the other side is being and the media gives us lots of breathless hype along the lines of "But what if they NEVER pass a budget? What if they DEFAULT on the DEBT? That could totally HAPPEN, right? Right??? And {side we don't like} is SO UNREASONABLE that it MIGHT happen - Oh noes!!!!11!!"

This can go on for weeks, and it gets great ratings.

Then, almost invariably on the very last day before the HORRIBLE DEADLINE passes, one of two things happens. Either (a) they reach a last-minute compromise and pass the (modified) resolution, or (b) they pass an emergency measure somehow extending HORRIBLE DEADLINE to allow for a couple more weeks of this nonsense.

It's all just part of our sausage-making process.

Angelastic

So, logically, the politicians aren't paid either during this time (they're government employees, right?), and you don't pay taxes?

chicazul

@glenra According to the sources I've read, Reagan's government was shut down 8 times, all between 1 and 3 days. Every other shutdown has been longer. There have been 12 shutdowns since 1981, including the current one. The last one, under President Clinton, lasted 21 days, cost an estimate of $2 billion, and had little to no impact on American public opinion polls a few months later. Interesting!

Canada, being a parliamentary democracy, has a similar custom when a budget bill fails to pass, but instead of simply shutting down for a few days the current government must resign and we elect a new one.

glenra

I didn't read my sources carefully enough - @chicazul is correct. Although Tip O'Neil did indeed inflict 12 shutdowns during his time as Speaker of the House, those weren't all against Reagan - the first several were against Carter. Long ones, too - Carter's four shutdowns were of length 8, 8, 11, and 18 days respectively.



Wikipedia naturally is keeping a list.

Me, I've always liked the idea that Congress should have two houses, one of whose primary job is to pass legislation and the other of whose job is to repeal legislation whose time has passed. (as per a suggestion made in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress ) Our legal code sort of still works, but it's patches on top of patches by this point. In desperate need of pruning and it's nobody's job to do that so it doesn't get done. 

Canada's system sounds like fun too.

Thalandor46

What I find interesting about this whole mess is that it's the first shutdown to really take place in the age of information.  Maybe there will be enough outcry to actually do something about that particular source of bullshit in the system...ok, probably not.  But maybe!

stevendj

Members of Congress continue to be paid. There's actually a Constitutional amendment which prevents their pay from being cut; its intent was to prevent Congress from raising its pay mid-session, but the wording forbids any mid-session variation in their pay.

@glenra, if you read the Wonkblog article linked from that Wikipedia list, you'll see that the law governing unauthorized spending was interpreted differently pre-Reagan: "So the 'shutdowns' listed below that happened between 1976 and 1979 did not always entail an actual stop to government functioning; they were often simply funding gaps that didn't have any real-world effect." The Reagan-era shutdowns were resolved quickly, within 1-3 days. What's happening now really is different and much worse than any of the shutdowns engineered by Democrats.

Angelastic

FWIW, in Switzerland, the politicians would do whatever the people told them to do via referendum, then go back to their day jobs.

BrettGlass

Congress continues to accrue pay, but I do not know if they actually get their checks, since the staff members who cut them are almost certainly furloughed.
 
Have not seen Joel R. much online lately, but since he works at the Smithsonian he would almost certainly be off work.

kate

Yes, @Joelr is on furlough, as are many other Monkeys.

villicious

My FBI friend is working for free. She'll only be paid if back pay is approved after the shutdown is over. She also told me that all paid leave has been canceled for "essential" people, which means she and several people she works with can no longer take trips they had planned and paid for.

BrettGlass

Indeed, one of the rotten things about the furlough is that, according to the rules, if you had vacation scheduled during the time you are furloughed it is converted from paid leave to unpaid leave (unless Congress decides to pay you retroactively). This happened to a friend here in Laramie who works for the Forest Service. He headed off on his trip not knowing if he was going to be docked the money that was supposed to pay for it.
 
And NWS employees, some of whom are on duty while the accounting staff has been sent home, even resorted to sending coded messages pleading for their FSO (financial service officer, AKA paymaster) to pay them:

https://twitter.com/MascoFromABC2/status/386228009910288384

Fortunately for them, Congress acted this morning to pay furloughed workers. So, now the workers are no longer getting the shaft; taxpayers are. They are paying all of those salaries but work is not getting done. So much for fiscal conservatism.

villicious

For people who are working, it didn't go from paid to unpaid leave ... it went from paid leave to "if you take your vacation you will be considered AWOL."

The house passed the bill, but the senate has not yet, so while it's more promising that people will be paid than it was earlier, it's still not a guarantee.

BrettGlass

As I understand it, time off during the furlough can't officially be considered to be paid vacation, but if Congress agrees to pay them (and the Senate would be harming its own aides, who run the place, if it didn't) it will effectively be that. So, leaving town is only a problem if the furlough ends and your boss doesn't want to let you use vacation time for the remainder of your original vacation. In which case it's a gamble.
 
Given that his vacation was supposed to include this past week and the two weekends surrounding it, and he didn't expect the intransigent Congress to resolve anything quickly, my friend just went. He would have lost thousands of dollars if he didn't. Now that it's the second weekend, he's safe.

villicious

You're missing what I'm saying here. At least in the agency my friend works for, for "essential" employees who are currently working, all paid leave is canceled. She cannot run the race she has been training for all summer because she is expected to be at work. If she does not come to work, she will be treated as AWOL and face the disciplinary action that will come along with that. There are multiple other people in her agency who are "essential" and expected to work who are now out thousands of dollars because if they leave to take vacations they already had approved and have already paid for, they will be considered AWOL.

I'm not talking about people on furlough. I'm talking about the many, many people who are actually still working and didn't have a lot of hope until this morning that they would be paid for this work.

This probably sounds like a minor point considering the people who are currently being furloughed and the people who rely on government programs that are currently not running or at risk of running out of money, but these are still human beings who put time and money toward time off that they had earned, which they now cannot take.

BrettGlass

Yes -- because your friend, like the NWS forecasters who were worried about getting paid, is an "essential" employee who hasn't been furloughed, she's in a different bind. Her vacation has been canceled, she's missing a race, and she's expected to work even though her paycheck may be delayed. That's indeed a bummer.
 
The airlines are pretty nasty in this day and age, but perhaps she can at least convince them not to penalize her. (Some, like Southwest, will let you rebook at a later date.)
 
It's a shame that a few crazies in Congress are able to cause so much grief. But, alas, the Constitution says that the House must originate appropriations and can set its own rules. And those rules, in turn, let the Speaker hold up votes due to partisan political pressure. So, the Speaker is refusing to allow a vote on any budget bill that doesn't contain a "poison pill" (revocation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act).
 
We might be better off with a parliamentary system in which there could be a vote of no confidence that sent Congress, rather than Federal workers, home. And in which there were more parties that mattered, rather than two rivalrous gangs. (It'd be better still if there were no parties at all, but it's unrealistic to expect that to happen.)

stevendj

I found out today that Ford's Theater is closed, both as a museum and as a working theater. So even if furloughed workers receive back pay, the actors in The Laramie Project who are unable to work due to the shutdown won't.

BrettGlass

Status update: Can't believe that the needless and pointless government shutdown is still going on. The Internet provider I operate is starting to get calls from folks who work for government contractors (who have been told to stop work and are not being paid) and/or the Fed itself, asking if they can defer paying their bills. Tenants are asking if they can delay paying rent. Tourist destinations such as national parks are shut. And ranchers who lost cattle due to a surprise snowstorm and frost last week can't get help.
 
In the meantime, Wyoming's "representatives" in DC -- who represent their political party's ambitions but not the interests of their constituents -- are gung-ho about holding the nation hostage and even seem prepared to force the government to default on bonds and other obligations, destroying its credit. Most of us are very unhappy with them.
 
Here's hoping that all members of the JoCo community who have been affected by the shutdown are muddling through. Those of you who don't live in the US, be thankful. Our government, once an example for the world, has been co-opted by political parties and has been rendered completely dysfunctional. Hope this won't affect anyone's ability to attend concerts, conventions, cruises, or other events.

keeksg

Wait, when was the US government an example for the world? I must have missed that

Angelastic

Can't somebody launch a popular initiative to change what happens when the government isn't doing its job? Or do the people not actually have a say?

srdownie

The American people only have a government "say" in the sense that French common folk had a "say" in their government circa 13 July 1789.

stevendj

Angela, the people had their say when they elected their representatives to Congress. A lot of them said they wanted some complete bozos to make decisions about government. Hopefully at the next election (in 2014), many of those people will reconsider their decision.

Incidentally, residents of Washington, DC (like me) do not have a say in whether Congress does its job. Not only do we not get to vote for representatives in Congress, but Congress has control over our city's budget, so we can't even spend money collected by local taxes without their approval. Right now local government is being kept open using an emergency fund; when that runs dry, we'll have no way to pay police, schoolteachers, etc.

mikesphar

The closest thing to a popular--meaning nationwide--initiative that would force change on the US Federal government would be a constitutional amendment originating from the states, which would have to be passed by the legislatures of two-thirds of the states. This has been attempted twice in the nation's history but has never been successful. There's nothing equivalent to a national referendum by popular vote. Such a thing would have been and would still be fervently opposed by the smaller states and residents of rural areas, who would feel unduly dominated by the voters of the more densely populated areas.

The way Americans get a say in national legislature is by their periodic elections of Representatives and Senators. Elections which usually have abysmally low voter turnouts if there is not also a Presidential election happening. (In which case they are merely depressingly low.)

There's just now equivalent in the US system for "This government isn't working, dissolve it and call new elections immediately". We've gotten by okay without that for a couple hundred years, but it may turn out to be a fatal oversight on the part of our illustrious founders.

BrettGlass

By the way, according to this article, the shutdown is putting more footraces in jeopardy, and/or forcing them to be rerouted, because they were scheduled to be run in national parks:

http://www.arlnow.com/2013/10/15/shutdown-changes-10-miler-route-puts-marathon-in-jeopardy/

Note: The National Mall and most of the monuments in Washington, DC -- including the veterans' memorial that was stormed by angry vets last weekend -- are considered to be national parks.

Angelastic

Well, at least people will be able to see what their taxes are useful for, I guess.

BrettGlass

Whew! The US government opened again this morning, after between 20 and 40 billion dollars (depending upon how you calculate it) were wasted by a rabid political faction fighting against civilized health care and women's rights. My businesses extended the time for Federal employees and contractors to pay their bills, so that they can catch up gracefully. Hope that no one in the community was too horribly impacted by this farce....

glenra

Much of the pain caused by government shutdown is due to prior government-inflicted restrictions. Myriad rules exist that in order to do X, you need to get the government's permission. What we really need is some sort of a blanket uber-rule that says if you can't get the government's permission because the government is broken, you can just go ahead and do it anyway. So if the government's closed, the default rule should be that people can still visit national parks (at their own risk), people can travel without a passport, they can transfer ownership of stuff, etcetera.

It's like, if you're designing a building with electronic locks you have to deal with the question of what happens if the power goes out - do you fail OPEN or do you fail SHUT? If the system fails SHUT and there's no backup escape mechanism, everybody is likely to get locked in the building and die in case of a fire or other disaster. Our government mostly fails SHUT, with no emergency escape bar. We could try to fix that. Unfortunately none of our representatives are likely to have that sort of QA mindset and I doubt there's much constituent demand for that particular flavor of disaster planning.

(In the case of most federal parks, the easy answer would be to just get rid of federal control. Sell/give the land back to the states and the problem goes away.)

BrettGlass

Hooboy. If the rules said that corporations could do whatever they wanted if the government was shut down, the Tea Partiers, who are essentially anarchists funded by corporate interests, would shut it down in a heartbeat... and do everything they could to keep it closed. We would see massive destruction of the environment, uncontrolled corporate mergers, and other travesties. I do not think this would be a desirable situation for most of us.

P.S. -- In the same vein (pun intended), the Republican members of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works published a statement this week saying that they were glad that the shutdown crippled the EPA and hindered enforcement of environmental regulations, especially those related to mining and fracking. Drill, baby, drill! ;-)