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Two Week Extention

The concept of a federal government "shutdown" is interesting since that results in all non-essential federal personnel being paid not to perform their non-essential work. What nobody seems to ask is:

1) Why do (must?) we have non-essential federal personnel in the first place?

or

2) Why is it essential (or fair?) to pay anyone full salary not to work?
 
ttwtt78640 said:
The concept of a federal government "shutdown" is interesting since that results in all non-essential federal personnel being paid not to perform their non-essential work. What nobody seems to ask is:

1) Why do (must?) we have non-essential federal personnel in the first place?

or

2) Why is it essential (or fair?) to pay anyone full salary not to work?
Click to expand...

Life goes on with hardly anyone noticing every time this happens, which is probably why Obama felt the need to try to make the 2013 shutdown as visibly painful as possible.
 
I can't speak to question one, but number two is because a company is legally required to offer FULLTIME employees a minimum of 37.5 hours per week. If they schedule those hours and post it, that is akin to a legally binding contract. If they don't schedule it, they are in violation of the first rule. Ergo, employee is gonna get paid for 37.5 hours, so long as they have displayed an ability and willingness to work those hours.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
The concept of a federal government "shutdown" is interesting since that results in all non-essential federal personnel being paid not to perform their non-essential work. What nobody seems to ask is:

1) Why do (must?) we have non-essential federal personnel in the first place?

or

2) Why is it essential (or fair?) to pay anyone full salary not to work?
Click to expand...

My only first hand knowledge of this is from my years working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. When there was a government shut down most of the civilians were furloughed as being non-essential. The rest of us had to cover down.

But being non-essential for a couple weeks is not the same as being non-essential indefinitely. The longer the furlough goes on the more detrimental it becomes to the mission.

I’m not saying there aren’t positions we can’t afford to get rid of indefinitely. I am saying that many of the positions we declare “non-essential” during government shut downs don’t fall into that category.

You can put off going to the dentist for awhile without any bad consequences. But if you put it off too long there likely will be some.
 
KevinKohler said:
I can't speak to question one, but number two is because a company is legally required to offer FULLTIME employees a minimum of 37.5 hours per week. If they schedule those hours and post it, that is akin to a legally binding contract. If they don't schedule it, they are in violation of the first rule. Ergo, employee is gonna get paid for 37.5 hours, so long as they have displayed an ability and willingness to work those hours.
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If that is the case then have simply have them work. It is silly to pay someone not to work. In some jobs that I have had (construction and golf course maintenence) we got paid "show up" time of 2 hours on days which the weather prevented us from working but only if we showed up.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
My only first hand knowledge of this is from my years working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. When there was a government shut down most of the civilians were furloughed as being non-essential. The rest of us had to cover down.

But being non-essential for a couple weeks is not the same as being non-essential indefinitely. The longer the furlough goes on the more detrimental it becomes to the mission.

I’m not saying there aren’t positions we can’t afford to get rid of indefinitely. I am saying that many of the positions we declare “non-essential” during government shut downs don’t fall into that category.

You can put off going to the dentist for awhile without any bad consequences. But if you put it off too long there likely will be some.
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That is a good reason to use contract personnel for those "mission support" positions. When I worked as a defense contractor (computer programmer/analyst) we did not get paid for hours or days not worked even though the positions were full-time otherwise. During snow (or typhoon) events and/or shutdowns the DoD civilians were paid to not work but as contract personnel we were not allowed to bill for hours not worked and had to use our vacation hours or days to get any pay for that unscheduled off time.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
That is a good reason to use contract personnel for those "mission support" positions. When I worked as a defense contractor (computer programmer/analyst) we did not get paid for hours or days not worked even though the positions were full-time otherwise. During snow (or typhoon) events and/or shutdowns the DoD civilians were paid to not work but as contract personnel we were not allowed to bill for hours not worked and had to use our vacation hours or days to get any pay for that unscheduled off time.
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I was more addressing your first point as to why have these “non-essential” positions in the first place. As to your idea of using contractors for such positions, I think that could be a good idea.
 
Rexedgar said:
Why are we constantly having this b/s. Pass a long term spending bill and stop this all too frequent threat to shut down the guvmint!


https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/07/government-shutdown-2017-house-republicans-285329
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It's just ridiculous. I think both sides keep on doing this because they both think that this gives them more opportunities to gain concessions from the other side. Neither side seems to be smart enough to figure out that the other side is doing it for the same reason.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
The concept of a federal government "shutdown" is interesting since that results in all non-essential federal personnel being paid not to perform their non-essential work. What nobody seems to ask is:

1) Why do (must?) we have non-essential federal personnel in the first place?

or

2) Why is it essential (or fair?) to pay anyone full salary not to work?
Click to expand...

And they still get paid.

The Democrats are planning a DACA amnesty power play in exchange for not shutting down the government which the MSM will gladly blame Trump for. The compromise floating out there is “regularization”* of DACA’s in exchange for nationwide E-Verify.

But they are waiting until after Christmas recess when the temporary bill expires to go for it.

*permenant green cards until the democrats are in power again and return to open borders and grant amnesty to all, forever killing the GOP.
 
Rexedgar said:
Why are we constantly having this b/s. Pass a long term spending bill and stop this all too frequent threat to shut down the guvmint!


https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/07/government-shutdown-2017-house-republicans-285329
Click to expand...

Because for some reason the American form of government lacks the controls to ensure there is one. In the Westminster system if a government fails to pass a budget it gets dissolved and new elections are held, a pretty powerful incentive and it keeps happening until someone passes a budget. It has been the downfall of many governments outside the US.

There is also the whole debt ceiling thing, get rid of it. Because even if a budget is passed that is yet another obstacle.
 
chuckiechan said:
And they still get paid.

The Democrats are planning a DACA amnesty power play in exchange for not shutting down the government which the MSM will gladly blame Trump for. The compromise floating out there is “regularization”* of DACA’s in exchange for nationwide E-Verify.

But they are waiting until after Christmas recess when the temporary bill expires to go for it.

*permenant green cards until the democrats are in power again and return to open borders and grant amnesty to all, forever killing the GOP.
Click to expand...

I have yet to see an E-verify law proposed that had any real teeth. I would require an E-verify control number to accompany any labor cost deducted by the business for each employee whether paid by W-2 or 1099. Most proposed E-verify laws applied only to new employees of "large" employers.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
The concept of a federal government "shutdown" is interesting since that results in all non-essential federal personnel being paid not to perform their non-essential work. What nobody seems to ask is:

1) Why do (must?) we have non-essential federal personnel in the first place?

or

2) Why is it essential (or fair?) to pay anyone full salary not to work?
Click to expand...

Tell you what: Find some specific positions in the federal government listed as "non-essential." Name specific positions you'd eliminate and tell us why the job shouldn't exist.
 
Carjosse said:
Because for some reason the American form of government lacks the controls to ensure there is one. In the Westminster system if a government fails to pass a budget it gets dissolved and new elections are held, a pretty powerful incentive and it keeps happening until someone passes a budget. It has been the downfall of many governments outside the US.

There is also the whole debt ceiling thing, get rid of it. Because even if a budget is passed that is yet another obstacle.
Click to expand...

The sole purpose of a debt ceiling is to ruin America's credit rating when the minority party plays the brinksmanship game.
It's arguably not even constitutional to begin with.
 
Deuce said:
Tell you what: Find some specific positions in the federal government listed as "non-essential." Name specific positions you'd eliminate and tell us why the job shouldn't exist.
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I'm not saying that the job should not exist - I am saying that using a contractor to do that job would save money. If the law requires that public employees be paid not to work during government shutdowns (or at other times when no work for them exists) then using contractors would fix that nonsense.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
I'm not saying that the job should not exist - I am saying that using a contractor to do that job would save money. If the law requires that public employees be paid not to work during government shutdowns (or at other times when no work for them exists) then using contractors would fix that nonsense.
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I don't think government employees or contractors should have their house payments threatened purely because fringe subgroups in Congress want to hold the nation hostage. I don't think they should stop working in the first place.

Are you sure that contracting out EPA inspectors is going to be a good idea?
 
ttwtt78640 said:
I'm not saying that the job should not exist - I am saying that using a contractor to do that job would save money. If the law requires that public employees be paid not to work during government shutdowns (or at other times when no work for them exists) then using contractors would fix that nonsense.
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Not really the contractors wouldn't do it because they wouldn't get paid. You need to stop the nonsense at the source.
 
Deuce said:
I don't think government employees or contractors should have their house payments threatened purely because fringe subgroups in Congress want to hold the nation hostage. I don't think they should stop working in the first place.

Are you sure that contracting out EPA inspectors is going to be a good idea?
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It is a far better idea than paying them not to inspect. Only the government could come up with the idea of paying folks not to work to "save money". BTW, I agree with that bolded above.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
It is a far better idea than paying them not to inspect. Only the government could come up with the idea of paying folks not to work to "save money". BTW, I agree with that bolded above.
Click to expand...

It's not to save money. I'm not sure where people get this idea. There's no part of the government shutdown that is intended to save money. The government shuts down non-essential functions because it legally no longer has authority to execute them.
 
Deuce said:
It's not to save money. I'm not sure where people get this idea. There's no part of the government shutdown that is intended to save money. The government shuts down non-essential functions because it legally no longer has authority to execute them.
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Then why does it have the authority to pay them for work not done?
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Then why does it have the authority to pay them for work not done?
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Because Congress chose to do so when they passed the spending bill that reopened the government. They explicitly gave backpay to Federal employees. Because these are human beings with families to feed and bills to pay and they shouldn't suffer just because the tea party ****birds want to burn the whole place down.

It's easy for the ivory tower types in congress to forget that part. Thankfully, they are sometimes shamed into doing the right thing.
 
Harshaw said:
Life goes on with hardly anyone noticing every time this happens, which is probably why Obama felt the need to try to make the 2013 shutdown as visibly painful as possible.
Click to expand...

Yes, because that's the nature of support staff. They're mostly invisible to the public, and it doesn't matter for which organization they work - public or private. Doesn't mean that staff doesn't accomplish necessary tasks, just that their work isn't visible to the public, and if you want to build public pressure to end a stupid government "shut down" then the way to do it is to include staff that ARE visible, such as those running national parks, etc. who are clearly non-essential for a few days or weeks.
 
JasperL said:
Yes, because that's the nature of support staff. They're mostly invisible to the public, and it doesn't matter for which organization they work - public or private. Doesn't mean that staff doesn't accomplish necessary tasks, just that their work isn't visible to the public, and if you want to build public pressure to end a stupid government "shut down" then the way to do it is to include staff that ARE visible, such as those running national parks, etc. who are clearly non-essential for a few days or weeks.
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That's not what he did. He put up barriers, he posted armed guards, he chased veterans off the WWII Memorial. No other President did anything like that in any previous shutdown. He wanted it to hurt. And he wanted the hurt to be blamed on Republicans.
 
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