Everything Counts

Well, there is that 26+ mile "tempo" on Saturday at least :-)

Fingers crossed it will be taken care of by the time you get back.

so do you not get to work or get paid b/c of all this?

I don't get to work or get paid. Dave gets to work but won't get paid until after they come to a conclusion, so he gets IOUs (different funding sources). It's actually unconstitutional for us to work without a budget, hence the shutdown.

When Congress couldn't agree over Sequestration, we got six mandatory unpaid days off. Now, again they can't agree and again I get to be a pawn in their political chess game and I get an indefinite amount of mandatory unpaid days off...I love my Congress!

Just sit around and stare at a wall while sucking down beet juice and water! That seriously sucks though. I am complaining about it ruining my mini parks vacation this week, but that's a white people problem v. your very real problem!

What sucks is sitting around with even more time to look up weather and overthink pace/strategy for Saturday...haha. I saved vacation time for STG this week and now I can't use it.

Josh, it's funny because all the news seems to worry about is the parks being closed and a panda cam being shut off, while thousands of employees are being furloughed.

The military still works and still gets paid (IOUs). To touch the military is political suicide. The public and the media love the military (and for good reason). Yet, I sit alongside some military members doing the same work or in this case higher skilled work than them for a fraction of the cost to taxpayers (military costs way more than civilians) and the public and media hate us and think we "deserve" the unpaid time off.

It's very frustrating to be a federal worker. No one appreciates your work (calls you lazy, wants your pay frozen, wants to lay you off), yet they rave about the military you sit with as being the best and protecting our Nation. What do they think the rest of us working there are doing? (NOTE: I am very much in favor of our military so please don't think otherwise).

Sorry for the rant...I feel better now ;-) Kind of...

I am sure you get this, but I think they leave the military open because we can't be seen as letting our guard down.

I think what you may be arguing for is identification of critical and non-critical functions but instead it's more of a hacking rather than a surgical exercise.

And certain republicans are rejoicing that the runaway train has been derailed!

Clearly, they couldn't shut down the entire military. Well they could, but that would just be beyond stupid (not that this isn't).

I'm not arguing that military shouldn't be exempt (I think they should be able to work uninterrupted as should all gov't workers) and I am not arguing the critical/non-critical or essential/non-essential designations (though those are terms the media uses and not the government). I'm just venting that we do the same work as 90% of military members and they are treated as heroes while we are lazy, slothful, money-grubbing, drains on the taxpayer. Read the comments on any article at any news website and it's pretty easy to see the public has no sympathy at all for furloughed federal workers.

There are exempt and excepted personnel still working today. Exempt (what the media calls critical or essential) means that furloughing you would lead to safety violations or a risk to national security. Excepted means you are lucky enough to be paid by a funding stream whose appropriation didn't expire yesterday. Several workers at Hill fall into that latter category. They are lucky enough to be paid by something other than the annual appropriated funds. In my office, we all do the same type of work and all of us are furloughed except two people just because of different funding sources. So, they go to work even though their bosses are furloughed as are their internal customers.

That's the thing, it's not that the whole government was shutdown but that certain parts were shut down. The two organizations with the lowest percent of furloughed members were Homeland Security (ie Border patrol, TSA etc) @ 14% and the infamous NSA @ 0%. That is what can be so frustrating about it. I am on delayed paid. That is I work with the promise of an IOU. Now when I get that, who knows. Most of the people I talk to said last time it took about a month to fix everything. It is a little unnerving to not know when you are going to get paid, yet I have to be to work every single day. And contrary to popular belief, as a government employee I don't make gobs of money and missing a paycheck or two will make life stressful. I just hope those in Congress, the Senate and the White House can stop grandstanding at the expense of others and just compromise on something. Ugh! :(

It is nice to have running to escape to, but sadly can't run all day and problems don't go away.

I am so sorry that you are both suffering through this and for no good reason.

Thanks. I think a lot of people forget the real people hurt in this once they get on a political soapbox.