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U.S. Government: Sorry, We're Closed
theodp writes "CNN reports that the U.S. government shut down at 12:01 a.m. EDT Tuesday after lawmakers in the House and the Senate could not agree on a spending bill to fund the government. Federal employees who are considered essential will continue working. But employees deemed non-essential — close to 800,000 — will be furloughed, and most of those are supposed to be out of their offices within four hours of the start of business Tuesday."
They're free to do whatever, as long as they're ready to return to work with only a day's notice. Then they get paid for all the time they were out of work once the budget's resolved. It's basically a paid vacation, except you don't get paid until it's over, and you can't really travel out-of-area. Source: Was furloughed during Clinton's reign.
Are you kidding me? Let me summarize the situation:
* The Senate passes a bill to continue federal funding as required
* The House passes a bill that also kills Obamacare completely
* The Senate rejects it
* The House passes a bill that delays Obamacare for a year, kills the medical device tax, and kills women's contraception coverage
* The Senate rejects it
* The House passes a bill that kills the individual mandate (the only thing that would make Obamacare work)
* The Senate rejects it
* The government shuts down
Here's the strategy of the Republicans: shut down the government and then threaten to default (this happens on Oct 17th if the debt ceiling isn't raised). The government shutdown is simply a way for the Republicans to show that they are serious. It is an annoyance, but it is not an economic calamity. But the debt ceiling is. If the government defaults, everything is going to hell. So far the Republicans have just shot one hostage. Now they are threatening to kill them all.
That's just B.S. The house wasn't sending a budget bill to the senate, they were trying to subvert the democratic process by transforming an appropriations bill into a way to attack Obamacare.
They've tried 50 times to vote it out, and since that hasn't worked they've just gone ahead and tried to backdoor it.
This isn't true. There is no guarantee that furloughed workers will be paid for their time upon their return.
I was there for the last shutdown.
By statute, email was not sufficient for notification. Every employee had to show up to the office and be given a formal-on-paper memo telling them they were furloughed. Remember, by statute, the in-person delivery of a notice on paper was required. That meant that *every* field employee had to make there way back to the office the same morning to receive their paper. Special Agents were called off of stake-outs. Employees permamently assigned to work from home or from desks at non-government entities had to leave their normal workspace and come into the federal building that was, theoretically, their place of employment...even if they *never* set foot in that building under normal circumstances.
At the last shutdown, every federal building was packed. There wasn't room for all the people who were forced to show up all at the same time. Halls were lined with people standing around because they had no place to sit. Friends gathered in groups of 4 or 5 around the desk of the one guy in their group who actually had a desk.
All of this may have been changed in the meantime.
However, post-9/11 we used to discuss the prospect of another shutdown and always concluded the same. Congress would be stupid to do it. The mechanics of the process made every federal building in the nation an incredibly enticing, super-target-rich environment for any nut job with a bomb or a gun who wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.
We tended to think that putting all government employees in central locations, metaphorically under a giant banner that said "All terrorists attack here. Multiple high-value targets present. High level of success guaranteed." was so stupid that even Congress wouldn't do it.
Of course, we might have been wrong about that.
You guys both have it slightly wrong.
The last time this happened, everyone was split into two groups: "essential staff" was required to come to work, but for no pay because even in absence of a budget it was dangerous for them to not perform their duties (the guys who fix broken traffic lights, for example, and others). The other grou was "non essential" and sent home with no pay.
After the budget was resolved, everyone came back to work and was paid for those days. But the essential staff complained that although everyone got paid, the "non-essential staff" basically got a free vacation and were paid for it, while the 'essential staff' had to work for their money.
The economists agreed it was basically unfair. So while at some point the political folks can make a decision about whether to pay back-pay or not, there's no guarantee. In fact the fair thing to do is not pay back salary for the non-essential staff, since they did not perform their duties.
Point is: they have to decide what to do, and there's no guarantee anyone will be paid for their time, which sucks.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
They also re-elected a GOP majority in the House where funding bills start.
The House is gerrymandered. It does not accurately represent the will of the people, but rather represents the cumulative will of the parties in control of the states. If I remember correctly, between 95% and 98% of Congressional seats are predetermined by gerrymandering.
Furthermore, you already wrote "Polls show half the country thought the law was already fully in effect until last week or so and the majority don't understand their obligations or the most perfunctory effects the law will have on them" so clearly this can't be the will of the people, if half of them have no idea what the law is or will do. I'm not sure how this could conceivably be seen as anything other than the political obsession of a minority of congress.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
While the people did elect Obama a second time they also elected a majority republican congress at the same time. The people did vote for a divided government, although I do wonder how many people were voting against Romney instead of voting for Obama.Considering that Obama got a higher percentage of the vote than the democrats did in congress (looks to be about 3%) it would seem likely that people were voting against Romney.
You should be aware that the Democrats won the congressional popular vote by around 50.7% to 49.3%, but because of gerrymandering (the practice of dividing congressional districts to subvert the will of the public), they have fewer seats in congress than the Republicans.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Yes, but you could split the votes out evenly by state, and the Democrats would still be in control of Congress today. For example, the Democrats got about 12% more votes for their congressional candidates in Michigan in 2012. Michigan has 9 Republican reps and only 5 Dems. In Pennsylviana the Democrats got about 80K more votes than Republicans. Pennsylvania has 13 Republicans and only 5 Democrats.
The House is supposed to be the Representative body of our legislature, but that is no longer the case. The Republicans have managed to rig the system so they can lose elections badly, and still be the majority. They can lose barely, and be in a huge majority. This is not democracy in any way, so we should not be surprised when they proceed to act like elections don't matter. They don't.