461–470 of 612 posts
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Contractors are not working now though they were sent home. There are 3 buckets of people: 1) Employees forced to work. Promised backpay by a resolution that was passed. 2) Employees not allowed to work. Promised backpay by a resolution. "Free vacation" 3) Contractors not allowed to work. Will not get backpay, money lost is "gone" forever.
Wouldn't 13A guarantee (1) getting paid regardless of resolution?
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Congress can write, and rewrite, any law. Congress will virtually never be held responsible for any event, since they control the law itself. Another thing: Trump issued a veto-threat against the bills that passed the House. Trump refuses for a budget to be passed unless it has his wall. Republicans don't want to betray their leader, so they're holding firm with Trump.
Q: Why don't republicans want to betray their leader? Is there that much republican support for Trump right now?
Note: Republican Senators and House members are trapped. Literally every Republican Senator up for election 2016 to 2018 who said something bad about Trump was voted out.
Lisa Murkowski is the one exception: her next election is in 2022. And she's clearly expecting Trump to be voted out in 2020 (which is why she's willing to go against him so much). She's willing to play the long game.
All the other Republican Senators who didn't like Trump's policies (Jeff Flake, John McCain, etc. etc.) are gone. I guess Mitt Romney (new Utah Senator) is a new instigator, but the anti-Trump Republican movement is basically dead at this point.
Either a Democrat took over the seat, or a harder-leaning Republican took over.
Note that over 30% of the US Population agrees with Trump on the issue and still strongly supports him through this shutdown. If you are a Republican and in the House or Senate, you HAVE to earn the support of that 30%, because no one really will vote for you if you go against this base.
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Again, I'd have to respectfully disagree here. The US Treasury Department is most analogous to the finance department of most corporations. Which, incidentally, is also shutdown right now because the board and the ceo told them to close. (Just as an additional point of fact, the finance department of many organizations does not set departmental budgets. That's not how it works. One of the reasons they exist is to, "f…
Congressional appropriations bills are exactly how projects get financed in government. All this does it make it all the more clear to me that you don't know how this process works. You still have provided zero justification for Congress being the "board" even though it is a terrible metaphor.
Relax guy. We can just agree to disagree. No worries.
I just thought that since the Founders' intended congress to act as a check and balance on the president it's pretty much analogous to the boards that act as a check and balance on a given ceo in your average corporate structure. It also seemed reasonable to view Treasury as the finance department.
But seriously, no worries if you see things differently. No biggie man.
You have a nice rest of your day.
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Don't blame only the president, congress has just as much blame for not passing a budget the president would agree to.
They passed this last budget unanimously which means they that 60% more votes than were needed for a veto override.
Bearing in mind that ~40% of american's could not come up with $400 to cover emergencies, this is going to become more prevalent in the next few days / weeks as people will simply not be able to afford gas to get to their unpaid work. I read an article today discussing how TSA workers in HI are living in their cars in the airport parking lot as they cannot afford to commute. The FBI just cancelled its internship prog…
I've seen too many people say, "Oh, government workers should all know this stuff happens all the time, and if they don't have months or years of savings in the bank then it's just their fault". It's really sad that instead of being compassionate, too many are focusing on what "should" be instead of what is the reality for many people. Like you point out, the reality is that most people don't have savings. They shoul…
Businesses go under all the time and people are laid off. It's unfortunate, but as someone who works for private companies and not the government, I've been unexpectedly laid off before, and understand that this could happen at any time (and no, I'm not really prepared for it either).
So, I feel sorry for the workers as well, but this is one of the risks you have to take to have a government job over a private one, and certainly not the only one.
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Its not nearly an equal cudgel. Generally the democrats want federal institutions to be in operation while Republicans want to disrupt and defund them. This correlates to 9 of 10 shutdowns (one in Bill Clintons term I'd consider him causing it) being propagated by Republicans on either side of negotiations, often with intent to defund some part of the government with the appropriations bills. Of course, I wouldn't he…
>they had the house and senate in 2008-2010 and chose not to go about abolishing the electoral college They had absolutely no way to do that. That would require a constitutional amendment. (There's another way around it where enough states agree to award electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, but that also requires action by the states).
The interstate compact, on the other hand, has enough signers that it is at least plausibly going to be successful. Though there will be lots of legal challenges if it ever gets used, it's not clear they're allowed to do such a thing.
Why 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.
>Why 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. I'm not sure if it's economically realistic but it seems politically realistic. The right should be fine with the idea of a government agency bein…
That's one potential issue right there – would this arrangement put airlines or airports into a position to squeeze concessions out of ATCs that might reduce safety? At the very least, minimum ATC pay would need to be federally regulated.
Federal 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...
It's explicitly illegal for Federal Workers to strike, per the Taft-Hartley Act. On top of that, there's not much indication that this administration really cares about what's popular. Federal workers haven't gotten a paycheck in over a month, suggesting that they should break the law because of the low likelihood of punishment underestimates the lengths to which this administration will go to punish those who oppose…
I believe paychecks were due today. Missing two paychecks can be very painful for a lot of people. I would expect things to cascade pretty quickly from this point.
Very painful? Why not just take out a loan? Wilbur Ross whole-heartedly recommends it!
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On one hand, I understand Ross’ reasoning. If my company were to go to a bank with a federal guarantee, we’d get a very cheap loan. On the other hand, he thinks an average individual’s response to missing paychecks should be to seek a low interest loan against a government guarantee. That’s comically out of touch. I’ve been working in finance my entire life and I’d have a tough time working through the loan applicati…
Reminds me of Mitt Romney's comments in 2012 about borrowing money from your parents: > “We’ve always encouraged young people, take — take a shot, go for it. Take a risk. Get the education. Borrow money, if you have to, from your parents. Start a business.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/romn...
However now i feel that some people really live in such a bubble that they do not have a basic understanding of the society they are living in and what 'average', 'above average','middle class' etc. means