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I don't get the sense that, as someone thoroughly impressed by a change in page count, you'll care, but in the interest of facts...
Most bureaucrats do not get paid during shutdowns.
Not that you should shed a tear for then; current law requires that they receive backpay for the shutdown.
So with that correction, please feel free to continue cheering for giving delayed-pay vacations to the bureaucrats.
Uh, the government won’t be open for much of this shutdown anyways. In practice government offices are shut down from Christmas through new years.
Are you maybe thinking state government? The feds don't have any holidays Dec 26 - Dec 32st.
Maybe he's alluding to the fact that government employees have lenient bosses and leisurely schedules that allow them to take solid two-week or three-week blocks of vacation leave around Christmas and New Year's, and large proportions of them use this opportunity to the fullest.
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Yeah Contractors get hosed, unless their company has enough private contracts, employees get a delayed pay vacation.
I believe contracts are generally written such that funding isn’t affected by a small shutdown.
This shit is old hat.
Most major contractors I know something about keep a chunk of their budget aside for this sort of thing, so they can usually keep paying people for a few weeks/months before they have to start freezing nonessential workers.
I think some contracts are funded up front as well.
I just don’t recall any contractors I know worried about losing pay from shut downs.
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I did have a dark thought this could be some sort of 4d chess play.
Back in 2022, Elon cleared the way for his purchase of Twitter by trying to get out of it. It was a brilliant move. Everyone who was against him before said "no, no, you HAVE to buy it". Incredibly, progressives celebrated when they "won" and forced him to buy it. Two years later, Trump won the popular vote and DEI programs are being canceled all across America.
There's a chance that the shutdown is actually the intended point. If he were smart, Jeffries would get the Dems to go along with the new 116 page bill. The bill is fine. But instead, he is apparently fighting it. Now HE owns the shutdown. When Trump takes charge, there's a chance they'll just tell the furloughed workers, "you know what, stay home, you're fired". They are, after all, self-identifying as non-essential. Too bad the Democrats couldn't sign the continuing resolution..
Epistemic status: Extremely speculative.
This is perhaps the furthest thing possible from "self identification" - it's your boss telling you you're not important enough to be paid.
I know we're all super cynical mercenaries here, but ...
If my job was essential to the well-being of the country, I'd work anyway if they let me. Even if they didn't let me, I might sneak in and do work.
I've been one of those people. I was told if it got that bad, I'd have to come in without pay (while everyone else was at home without pay)... but that my line manager would be right there in the office beside me, working without pay, out of personal principle on his part rather than any corporate requirement.
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It's a violation of the anti deficiency act to work while forloughed. You risk being fired when everyone else comes back, for violating a very clear red line.
Thanks for that. I was pretty sure it was illegal to work while furloughed.
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No, the media decides who owns the shutdown. So when the National Christmas Tree goes dark, the Republicans will be to blame.
Who cares? New CEO. You start saying “the estimates are too rich we are going to lower.” Rio the band aide off at the start. As a result you start off with only upside.
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The media will say that. But how much do they still matter?
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I feel it is important to note that, just two month ago, the media decided that Kamala had all the momentum and Iowa was in play. They will certainly try to blame Republicans, they may very well succeed, but events might not play ball.
After 20th of January. Republicans are not in power.
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Hey no need to snark. Thank you for the correction. Yes, it's possible that many (what percentage?) of bureaucrats will not receive checks temporarily. My guess is that the details are complicated.
But the page count does matter. Reductio ad absurdum, would you be okay with a 1 million page continuing resolution? We need our congresspeople to actual read and be informed about the laws they vote on. Frankly, it's hard to believe that anyone would take the opposite position.
They're not that complicated.
With a few exceptions, all federal employees are furloughed during a shutdown. (This includes everyone from "bureaucrats" to the janitors cleaning the buildings - assuming the latter are actually federal civilians and not contractors, which many of them are.) This is not just all the people you think of as "bureaucrats" in HHS and the VA and SSA and EPA and NEA and national parks, etc., but folks working for the DoD, for the IC, the FBI, and the GS-4 park rangers and motor pool guys and badge issuers and so on.
The exceptions are people who are considered "essential." This does not, contrary to what some folks have suggested, mean that everyone else could easily be fired and the government would carry on just fine. You can suspend the operations of a bunch of agencies for a while and most people would not notice immediately, it doesn't mean that work isn't piling up and the effects won't be felt eventually. But essential personnel have to keep working to make sure everything doesn't literally grind to a halt.
This is one reason why a lot of people think these furloughs are "no big deal," because the stuff that people would really notice - airports being shut down, social security checks not being mailed out, military standing down, etc. - doesn't happen thanks to the skeleton crew of "essential personnel" who continue to work.
Everyone else goes home and all work stops.
In the past, in theory, furloughed federal employees had no guarantee of being paid for their forced time off, though in practice, Congress always voted to restore their back pay. After playing chicken over CRs became an annual thing, Congress passed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act in 2019, which guarantees back pay after a furlough. So yes, feds are essentially being given a free paid vacation during a furlough. (Though they still aren't getting paid during it, which can cause financial hardships for some if the furlough goes on for a long time.)
If you think this is unfair, that feds are getting a "free vacation," well, it is, but that's entirely on Congress's shoulders. And if you said "Sorry, furloughs mean you just don't get paid, now come back to work when Congress says so, and by the way, this is likely to happen on a regular basis," consider who will stick around to work for the government under those conditions and who won't. If you're one of those "abolish the federal government, all government employees are parasites" types, this may sound good, but most people I think would not like the long-term effects.
Keep in mind that a lot of people working for the government now are actually contractors working for private companies, but doing "government business." (This is an entirely different boondoggle on a huge scale.) They are not allowed to work in government buildings during a government shutdown, and they don't get back pay restored by Congress. Some of them will be temporarily sent home by their companies unpaid; others will be given work to do by the company during the furlough. This is entirely up to each company.
Overall, furloughs are a big expensive mess that shouldn't happen if not for Congressional dysfunction.
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