E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSFrom NBC's Shawna Thomas and Carrie Dann
While all federal agencies are required to write and maintain shutdown plans, very few of those plans are available to the general public.
Congressional staffers – the group of federal employees closest to the lawmakers who could create or avoid a shutdown – have more information than most, but some say that there are still a lot of unanswered questions for Capitol Hill aides.
The House Administration Committee offers a new website to help explain how congressional offices should navigate a shutdown. Salley Wood, communications director for the committee, said the site -- which can be found here -- went live on Tuesday when the committee issued its initial guidance to congressional offices.
But while that information is more than many other workers have, aides say there is still a lot of uncertainty about what a shutdown might mean for the thousands of federal employees who work on the Hill.
"There's no question that House Admin is in a tough spot, but the information has not been as accessible as we’d like,” said one Democratic aide. “There may be more information going to Chiefs of Staff, but most staff members feel a little in the dark."
For some aides, they may be “in the dark” because their individual offices are keeping them there. It is up to each office to decide, based on a three-pronged set of criteria, who is essential and non-essential.
Wood said that the committee did not "instruct any timing" for the offices to make those staffing decisions, although they recommended that offices give employees ample notice of the possibility of a furlough.
Per the federal code, “essential” congressional staffers:
1. perform activities "that entail or directly support Members’ performance of their constitutional responsibilities (including activities that entail the protection of the House’s and Members’ constitutional prerogatives)."
2. perform activities that entail the safe-guarding of human life;
3. perform activities that entail the protection of property.
According to committee guidance, that would definitely mean furloughs for the staff at the House Gift Shop, guides at the Capitol Visitors Center, the Botanic Gardens and the Flag Office.
But the first of the three standards is fairly broad, leading some members of Congress to say that they expect to keep most or all of their staff members at work even if there is a shutdown.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said yesterday, "I believe that especially during a shutdown that every member of my staff is going to be essential to answer all of the questions."
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., tweeted Wednesday, “If gov't shuts down, we won't. I believe those who choose to come into work fall under my Constitutional arm. Accountability must continue.”
Another unanswered question for employees: whether or not furloughed staff members can count on back pay.
During past government shutdowns, all furloughed workers did eventually receive delayed paychecks, but nothing in current law guarantees that they will this time around if a shutdown occurs.
That’s a point made sharply in a newly-published document from the Administration Committee explaining how offices should plan on navigating a shutdown.
The document reads:
Historically, when the federal government's funding has lapsed, the subsequent spending authority (whether
Continuing Resolution or an enacted appropriations bill) has provided for retroactive payment to employees.
This, however, is not guaranteed. The exact details of retroactive payment (if any is authorized) will depend
on the language of a continuing resolution or enacted appropriations bill. The normal payroll cycle may be
disrupted by a lapse in appropriations and checks may be issued at irregular times.
Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., announced late Thursday that he is introducing legislation to guarantee that federal workers get back pay in the event of a shutdown. But there's no word on whether the legislation, which he is cosponsoring with fellow northern Virginian Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., will get a vote on the House floor.
NBC's Luke Russert contributed.
Leave a Comment:
and Friday night the whole Capital will be in the Dark because Obama and the Democrats are going to shut down the Govt..
Drop the Riders you have a deal
FLASHBACK:
Behind closed doors wheeling and dealing unconstitutional Mandated Universal Health Care Reform legislation.
The House has deep-sixed the bill passed by the Senate that prevented Congress and the President from being paid if the government goes into shutdown.
The bill passed the Senate unanimously on March 1st, but it's been referred to committee in the House - so THEY STILL GET THEIR CHECKS!
If you don't like your Congressman getting paid while he shuts down the rest of the government, please contact the members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (23 Republicans, 17 Democrats).
Here are the riders the GOP put on the one-week continuing resolution bill:
How much of this has ANYTHING to do with the budget? How much is just cramming a right-wing social agenda down the throats of the American people? We need to put the blame where it's due and quit putting up with this crap. Get to work!
Hi RealAmericansFirst,
Good reporting on your part. Thanks
I'm not great fan of Obama--but this time, it appears he is not the only one to blame.
In the real world, when a company has to cut back, they hand you an envelop with your separation information, give you the name of a good firm that can help you write a resume, tell you good luck, and show you the door.
The biggest problem for these government staffers though will be them whining "When do I get my back pay?".
Someone should ask Jan who she thinks pays her staffers. She'd probably answer that "The Congressional Accounting Office cuts them a check every two weeks."
Jan Schakowsky - As dense as a black hole.
Good luck spinning that the President and the Democrats shut the government down when there is tape of Tea Party supporters yelling "Shut it down."
Hi Steller Fan,
I love video tape.
Who would you blame for the shutdown?
a) The present republican congress.
b) The previous democratic congress.
c) The tea party.
d) President Obama.
e) Speaker Boehner.
f) All of the above.
Anybody who reads my stuff knows my answer. What is yours and why?
Oh my Prosser just picked up 7,000 votes
You libbies got to miss on ACORN!
Oh and Indy Lib - I tend to blame the $.57 that is not borrowed for each dollar spent. It's totally the fault of the non-debt. :)
But come on this is 100% Pelosi's baby. Nancy, I really hope you are proud, cause yo screwed this pooch straight into the ground. Way to go!
?????
Not really what I was shootin' for there Spanky.
How about this, Indy- I blame EVERYBODY, including the idiot voters who believe that " everybody is entitled",
To a tax refund even if they do not pay taxes-
To Medicare Part D, while Medicare is going broke-
To Medicaid for the upper middle class-
To all the other government goodies handed out on credit.
It needs to be cut. Now. Deeply.
100% Pelosi? Come on Spanky. Admittedly, the dems dropped the ball on the budget last year so are included in my answer (f by the way). But who is running things now? Repubs seem to think they can do the same old thing and get a different result. I seem to remember that as being the definition of insanity. Are you really that partisan?
Come on Indy, let's talk turkey.
$.43 of every dollar spent is borrowed. You think that is not factored into any blame that may, or may not be assigned? Really, shall we pretend that is not a very scary and totally ridiculous fact?
Indy, math is hard, but it is the truth. You libbies just don't get it. Or are you gonna pay your "share" of all this debt?
Of course you can't. And that's why you all will always lose this argument - math. See, math is fun!
Time for everyone to back away from the tit, right Indy?
NoJo votes f. Congratulations! You win! You really need to talk to Spanky.
Spanky, if you remember last night, I yelled a great deal about the debt. I think you need to go back and reread my posts.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you the one who was insinuating the other day that DEMOCRATS would somehow, someway, find some votes under the mattress?
Maybe we should just wait and see.
The tea party All the way They do not want to compromise
True Barb, the tea party folks don't have compromise in their repetoire. They seem to want to revert back to natural law. I wonder what makes them think they would do well in that environment?
All answers are incorrect......Bush did it. [Ha, I beat the Liberals to that one]
Nah, the answer is multiple: Mr. Obama, King Reid, and Queen Pelosi. They had the helm in the White House, the Senate, and the House. As I think about this more, I speculate they did not get their lawful duty done passing a National Budget for a more sinister reason, and not because they were working behind closed doors wheeling and dealing to get votes for the Health Care Reform legislation for ten months.
If the government shuts down, keep glued to the next President's Executive Order.
Oh, BTW...the Tea Party is a movement and not a political party, such as the Progressives or the Conservatives.
Spanky,
It is sounding more and more like Prosser LITERALLY picked up 7,000 votes. Magically, like at the drive thru,...
The only thing that would make that WI story better would be if the 27 year old Walker Appointee that beat out the guy with the Master's Degrees and the other person ACTUALLY doing the job for the last year - yeah him,...was found to have been the driver for the precinct ballot pick up.
Now THERE is some serious competency. And all of this happened on Thursday? the election was Tuesday? no, there's nothing funny going on there. Smells EXACTLY like a Republican 'issue', though, doesn't it?
The GOP has their whole economic theory UPSIDE DOWN and DEAD WRONG. The reason tax revenues have plummeted is NOT because America is broke. Both corporate profits and GDP are ABOVE where they were in 2007.
So why is there no tax revenue coming in? Because the money isn't going to WAGES, it's being siphoned off by the investor class. (See the chart)
When workers are paid wages, 100% of that money goes back into the economy. They pay both income taxes and payroll taxes (which account for 36% of U.S. tax revenue), and they spend the rest on goods and services right here in America.
But when the money earned for corporations by their workers is instead diverted to corporate profits and the investor class, tax revenues plummet (NOT grow, as Paul Ryan so history-blindedly predicts). Despite their vastly higher income levels, corporations' share of the tax burden is only 12% due to their vast amounts of tax writeoffs, credits and creative accounting. Both investors and corporations are more likely to move their earnings overseas (into either tax shelters or foreign investments). And foreign entities also hold a big share of the stock market, diverting corporate profits abroad before the American tax system gets a penny.
The investor class also pays an historically low tax rate of 15% on their earnings, as most are capital gains. And neither corporations nor investors pay payroll taxes, a factor which alone knocks a huge hole in the tax rolls. Even when investors do pay earned income tax rates on a portion of their income, those top tax rates are at their lowest since the 1930's. U.S. tax revenues as a percentage of GDP are far lower than many countries whose economies are recovering faster than ours.
The GOP solution? Cut off all the remaining government services that benefit the working class. Cut the top tax rate even lower. Drive wages down even further.
Then pray the fat cats grow a heretofore unseen conscience and give a little of it back.
Are we really that stupid????
I will blame the republicans don't get me wrong the dems are a bunch of pansies and don't do their job but the republicans seem to hate middle and low income Americans at this time, they want to take from them and give to the rich. They are the ones who are trying to redistrubute the wealth and send it straight to the top 1% Since when did Corporations become more important than our hard working Americans familiies and the education of our children? When you have two political parties both have to compromise and the religious battles should be waged in church not in our government. This country elected officials should be looking out for the it's people and we should be looking out for eachother.
@JoAnnaSmith1 -- I've been laid off several times -- in the real world, I got a severance check. In the real world, my position was eliminated and I focused entirely on finding a new position. In the case of a government shutdown, the positions aren't eliminated -- the government expects the employees to return to work immediately when recalled. Do you really want the government to incur the expense of hiring and training countless new employees? In the case of a government shutdown, paychecks stop -- some workers won't even get paid for time they've already worked until after the shutdown. In the case of a government shutdown, it will end up costing us more than if the government had kept running.
The congressmen and their staffers are the people in government who have shown that they can't do their job -- but they make sure they keep getting paid. It is the numerous other hard working civil servants who will see their savings depleted and credit damaged because they're forced on unpaid leave until the government wants them back.
By the way -- the federal workforce is over two million workers. How do you think the economy will do with two million new unemployed workers?
Morons like you need to think before they speak.
Yep, I want them to re-hire. think there might be a couple of people out in that real world of yours that might apply?
You know it. And like you said, perhaps some of them will find a new position. Win, win, no?
@Spanky -- then you can pay for it -- I don't want my tax dollars wasted training a new workforce. FYI - I am in the real world.
No one seems to remember what is still recent history -- GOP forced a shutdown in '95 and the GOP suffered at the polls. Obama and his minions forced Obamacare down our throats and the Dems suffered at the polls. Now we (yes, I'm GOP) won the House and were on the verge of winning the Senate and more -- but a bunch of idiots are flushing our chance down the toilet. Who's going to suffer at the polls after this? The GOP will. Politics is always compromise -- it's like steering a ship with a series of nudges. When you push too hard, you get nowhere. Acting like a bunch of petulant brats is doing nothing but playing into the hands of the Democrats. And yes, refusing to compromise on defunding Obamacare *is* acting like a brat. If we were patient and waited until we won the Senate and WH, we could have simply repealed it.
See Spanky? ConcernedCitizen is an excellent example of someone who "gets it". This little shutdown will end up costing more than no shutdown at all.
@ ConcernedCitizen:
Agreed.
JoAnna doesn't mention whether she has experience with this. I do, but from a slightly different angle than you do. It's never easy, but as you say, most employers pay severance in cases where the "layoff" is caused by business circumstances.
It's interesting, however, to consider that it's usually people in the lower economic echelons who have no protection against layoff other than the possibility that their employers may elect to pay severance. It isn't required, and some people are tossed out on the street in exactly the way that JoAnna describes. That's REALLY hard, but JoAnna treats it rather cavalierly, as if it is merely a ho-hum fact of private sector worklife.
AND the dirty little secret that JoAnna doesn't tell you is that, unlike the ordinary worker, most executives have employment contracts that call for large severance payments when they are terminated without cause.
Cause? Yes, executives often have cause provisions in their contracts, just like unionized employees, although those same executives deny the same protections to the rank-and-file workforce.
The REAL fact of life is that, just like Congress, business executives usually treat themselves much better than the workers from whose labor they profit. Ironically, in that small way, which is not a good way, Congress DOES run itself like a business.
@Spanky:
Your comment proves you don't really know much about how the private sector works. Either that or you don't really care about government spending. Because ConcernedCitizen is absolutely correct that, even in the private sector, it costs a lot to hire employees, and as a result, employers do not turn over their workforce on a mere whim, which is what you are proposing.
And I don't know how you can argue that there are qualified workers out there to take the jobs that would open up when you and your conservative friends, especially including JoAnna, have consistently argued over the past year or two that the unemployed are nothing but lazy free-loaders who could get jobs if they just stopped drinking beer and got off the couch and went out and looked.
Frankly, Spanky, your suggestion offends ME as a taxpayer, as it is highly irresponsible from a fiscal AND a practical point of view, and has no rational relationship to good business practice.
Anna, very nice!
Anna,
You are talking to Spanky there, looking for a rational relationship to anything was your first mistake.
If the government is shut down, the Capital building should be locked. Let them meet outside.
I think it's time to shut down Washington DC and keep all the "parties" at home. They don't need to go to Washington. They just get in trouble there. Think how much we could cut from the budget if they worked from the offices they already have in thier home states. That would mean only one set of aides to follow them around like puppies. Only one home, that they pay for, not the taxpayers. Some of them might have to give up thier "girlfriends" and or "boyfriends" which would cut thier inccidentals budget in half. And no per diem. If they are eating at home, we the taxpayers aren't paying for it. If my boss can run her large postal branch via teleconfrences and video chats then why can't they? They have TVs now that have internet and skype built in. Any time we want to check up on them we could turn to our statewide skype your congressmen website and make sure they are in the office and working. I am a federal employee who suffered through the last shutdown. The non-essential employees had it much easier than the essential. I know I was non-essential. After I cleaned out my inbox, I sat at home and worried and cleaned out closets while the poor nurses had to show up for work without pay. They still had to buy gas and pay daycare. Take a guess what famous event happened on the day the government shut down in 95. Well, while I was cleaning out my inbox Monica Lewdinsky was enjoying a cigar with the president. I don't know how much money it costs the taxpayers to have this sweet little sin city open for bussiness but I guarentee we are getting ripped off.
Been losing sleep over this issue.... if there is a government shutdown and there is nothing going on in Washington, is George Soros going to continue to pay the leftwingers who post on here?
"GOP forced a shutdown in '95 and the GOP suffered at the polls"
Not true....Clinton was reelected in '96 but the GOP kept control of Congress.
Clinton could have been a one-term President -- just like Obama should be. He had exceedingly low approval ratings. After the shutdown his approval ratings became the highest since he was elected. You don't think that impacted the 1996 Presidential campaign? You don't consider that a setback for the GOP? I was in favor of the shutdown at the time -- later I saw how hit damaged our ability to take back the WH. I would not consider maintaining the status quo after the next election to be a good thing -- I would consider it a setback. We had momentum to set the government back on track -- but we're wasting it.
I'm still trying to figure out why this wasn't taken care of when the Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and the Presidency. You would think that passing a budget isn't all that difficult. There was an election in November. The Democrats received one of the worst defeats in modern history. They have got to know that the Senate and the Presidency are in serious jeopardy if they don't start doing the will of the people. Pass the damn budget. If the people aren't happy with the way things are going, they'll dump the Republicans and put the democrats back in. But just standing in the way of people that are trying to do the job that they wouldn't when they had the opportunity isn't going to play well with the American people. The Democrats are getting bad advice from somebody.
The Republicans stood solid. Democrats didn't. About that simple.
It is not the Dems...GOP got the money....this is holding govt hostage to force social policy changes the country does not want.
I watched Rachel tonight. She had a great special on how no one knew Newt Gingrich before the 1995 shutdown but after . . . the whole country knew him and he was depicted as the devil as "man of the year" for Time. Why? Because he was seen by most of the country as the devil. So Rachel's staff went around New York City showing a picture of Boehner and asking New Yorkers who he was and then also asking "Do you know who the Speaker of the House is?" No one knew. If we have a shutdown, as in 1995, we all know what will happen next. Time magazine will have another "devil" for their "Man of the Year" except this time they won't have to mess around with the pigmentation on the skin!
All true. But were you stunned no one knew Boehner? He is just a big accident away from the presidency. Disturbing.
Buffaloes Roam,
Newt had Boehner's job in 1995. No one knew Newt either before the shutdown but after . . .
"In the dark??!!" Yeah, they certainly are, always have been. Same for their "bosses."
OBAMA , Pelosi, Reed . and the coward DEms are the only one to blame. Charlie Rangle was on Fox News interviewed by O'Rialy in which Rangle said we "Just did Not get to It" meaning the budget. But see they NEVER they would get Squashed like the Cock Roaches they are so NOW EMPEACH OBABA and ship him and his family off to China where he can pull is Bull over there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Who would you blame for the shutdown?
a) The present republican congress.
b) The previous democratic congress.
c) The tea party.
d) President Obama.
e) Speaker Boehner.
f) All of the above.
Of course it is all of the above. The real problem is that after this is over, our situation will remain the same. The money they are talking about cutting is not near enough. The federal deficit for 1 year is 1.7 Trillion dollars. They are planning to cut spending by 60 Billion dollars. That is only 4% of the deficit. If you ran your household like that, you would be holding a cardboard sign next to the highway within 3 months. The scale of cuts they are arguing about will have no effect on the economy and our great grandchildren will be paying this bill for their entire lives. The budget is so out of balance that only MASSIVE cuts and tax hikes could ever hope to balance it again. Both parties are at fault. I hope they shut down the government and leave it closed until they can muster up the courage to really fix it.
We Know who to blame Keith, and I DO SIDE with you about shutting it down! This Clown in the white house has to be held accountable for all his actions, like flying all over the world at our expense for his vacations. For the life of me I can't beleive he is still allowed to live in this country.
We the U.S.A. people should take everything of value to him and his family and throw him out of this country, along with every body that sides with his BULL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How tolerant and AMERICAN of you to decide. The only clown I see is you.