I’m glad to see this. The shutdown has been too “business as usual” for most Americans, while others are expected to work without pay, which is ridiculous.
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US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
111–120 of 612 posts
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#112I hope not too off topic, but I'm puzzled by shutdowns. Every other country I can think of has a system where if the finance is not agreed, the previous budget just continues. The budget sets the yearly amount for each department and it runs on until another budget changes how much everyone gets. Sometimes a new department gets created, sometimes something is abolished. Everyone gets their salary and services run on.…
The recent interpretations of the anti-deficiency act (https://www.gao.gov/legal/appropriations-law-decisions/resou...) means that the government can be shut down unless functions endanger "life" or "property". Congress could amend the anti-deficiency act to fund the government at previous levels, but that would remove the shutdown process as a political cudgel.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#113Federal workers should start striking. I gather that in most cases they're explicitly prevented from striking, but I think there's a good chance that it's too unpopular to actually punish them. Also yesterday some leadership of the flight attendants union called for a general strike until it was over: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/could-an-unlikely-av...
they're explicitly prevented from striking Wow, is this true? Is this even legal (except maybe police and military)?
Reagan outlawed ATC strikes, after firing all of them during a dispute early in his presidency. Early 80s.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#114I’m glad to see this. The shutdown has been too “business as usual” for most Americans, while others are expected to work without pay, which is ridiculous.
Strictly speaking, their pay is delayed - they will be paid for all the work, eventually. Still, regular employees should not be going through this, though.
What about the federal workers that aren't at work? Will they still get paid?
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#115Was the fall of Rome this embarrassing as well?
Awfully nice of our US friends to try and make and feel better about our current bit of unpleasantness with our government here in the UK, but you really didn't need to bother....
Could a situation like this happen in the UK, do you think? Not voting through a budget would normally be a confidence issue, which would bring about the fall of the government, could we have a situation where that went on for a period of time without causing a new election?
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some banks are setting up low interest loan programs only for federal employees. They are low interest and are focused on amounts of 2-3 time your paycheck. Granted the rate things are going that might not be enough.
Not to mention that low interest loans are sort of predatory in this context, despite being lower than market rate interest rates. I understand that they have a profit a motive, but it doesn't make them the "good guys" in this scenario. There really are no good guys during a government shutdown.
Several banks are offering zero percent interest loans. Cheap advertising perhaps, but not predatory loans.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/18/here-are-the-banks-and-credi...
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the airports remain shut down, the economic cost will quickly balloon to multiples of the $5.7B requested for the wall. It's literally a rounding error in the budget.
Nobody actually cares about the $5.7 billion dollars, it's chump change for the government. This is all about appearance. The Democrats will lose face if they sign off on a budget which allows him to build his wall, and Trump will lose face if he fails to start building it (presumably in time for the next election). (It's also notable that neither party, politically, has a good reason to end it. Trump will have a har…
> This is all about appearance.
I don't think the democrats should cave because this is a terrible precedent that far outstrips "appearance". It feels like a perversion of checks and balances where, because on side doesn't get what they want, they shut down the entire government until the other side caves. I won't be a fan of future presidents shutting down the government every time they can't come to a bipartisan agreement.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#118Why can't the ATC adopt a funding model like the USPS so they don't have this problem in the future relying on appropriations. Can they basically charge airlines and other traffic for their services to fund the operations. I'm mostly curious if this is actually realistic.
They do.
https://www.iata.org/whatwedo/ops-infra/air-traffic-manageme...
Not sufficient to run cost free though it seems.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#119There's no way the federal shutdown lasts too much longer. The heat is on and too many people feel the hurt now, especially in a place like New York. If I were a betting man, I'd say 3-4 days max.
If the airports remain shut down, the economic cost will quickly balloon to multiples of the $5.7B requested for the wall. It's literally a rounding error in the budget.
It’s not about this line item, it’s about the executive branch ursurping the power of the purse by holding federal workers and huge sectors of our economy ransom. Trump was on national tv saying he’s intentionally doing this for a pet project.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#120There'll be a lot of angry people if the same thing happens in Atlanta over Super Bowl weekend.
Interestingly the law that created the TSA expressly allows private security checks if they follow published TSA guidelines.
It's just that the TSA has refused to publish any written guidelines.
So it's entirely possible that airports could just bring in their own security checks.