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House votes to approve back pay for furloughed workers
The Washington Post ^ | 10/5/13 | Jeff Simon

Posted on 10/05/2013 1:50:12 PM PDT by shego

As the fifth day of the federal government shutdown began, members of the House came together in a moment of rare bipartisanship to pass a bill, by a vote of 407 to 0, approving back pay for furloughed government workers....

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; Government
KEYWORDS: 113th; budgetsnafu; federalspending; furlough; governmentshutdown; impasse; shutdown
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To: shego

Then they need to get back on the job to earn that pay. The rest of us don’t get paid to sit home and play video games.


41 posted on 10/05/2013 3:38:36 PM PDT by bgill (This reply was mined before it was posted.)
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Donate here!

Free Republic News
All:
Just heard they’re going to discharge me this afternoon
and transfer me to a short-term rehab center.
Hoping to get physical therapy there so I can transfer
in and out of bed by myself, then I can go home.

Woo hoo!!
~ Jim
October, 5 2013
Let's finish this Thon quickly
so Jim can fully recover without
hosting the fundraiser for two months :)
Thank you!!

42 posted on 10/05/2013 3:55:15 PM PDT by RedMDer (http://www.dontfundobamacare.com/)
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To: shego

Paid vacation, as expected.


43 posted on 10/05/2013 4:06:34 PM PDT by PAR35
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To: arthurus

No, but you’re not going to fire them this go round.


44 posted on 10/05/2013 4:17:39 PM PDT by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: shego
There seems to be some misunderstanding about what "non-essential" employees are. It does not mean they are unproductive or superfluous. It means their office will continue functioning on any given day if they are not there.

As an example of this, I used to work in the records section of the National Weather Service. I maintained the records of the thousands of weather reporting devices spread across the nation. Keeping those records was necessary to determine which devices worked well, which did not, and which kept getting vandalized. NWS needed this information to maintain all the devices efficiently. But on any given day, if I wasn't there, the weather reporting went on.

45 posted on 10/05/2013 4:25:18 PM PDT by Steve0113 (T)
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To: shego
Not really surprising. Realistically, it's the only way to mitigate the economic and political damage of the snafu.

Wrong -- it wasn't a snafu. But it is now.

There was economic and political benefits accruing from the shutdown by the Pubbies but they are gone now.

46 posted on 10/05/2013 4:26:55 PM PDT by Uncle Chip
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To: shego

Will Ted Cruz vote for this ‘back pay’ when it comes up in the Senate?


47 posted on 10/05/2013 4:26:55 PM PDT by rephope
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To: EternalVigilance

Bassackwards.

FUBAR!!!


48 posted on 10/05/2013 5:44:52 PM PDT by tallyhoe
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So the most worthless of government workers get a paid
vacation while the least worthless have to work. I guess
the next thing is the least worthless will want a bonus
for having to work through the shut down. The government
only hires the unemployable and the most worthless and
then pays them thousands of times more that what they are
worth. I’d tell them to suck it up and walk it off and if
they don’t like it they can always quit.


49 posted on 10/05/2013 6:08:57 PM PDT by Slambat
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To: Iron Munro

“Republicans always make it easy on democrats.”

Naa, they are in on it with them. They’re just the false
opposition. They are the spineless side of the
democrat party.


50 posted on 10/05/2013 6:12:54 PM PDT by Slambat
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To: EternalVigilance
This paragraph in the article seems to run counter to your assertion:

“Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid supports the measure, but said Saturday that if furloughed workers are guaranteed back pay, there’s no reason to keep them out of work.”

Unsurprisingly, Reid is conflating terms. All Federal workers are in furlough status and thus not being paid. Some furloughed Federal workers (essential workers) are still required to report to work despite their furlough status.

I agree 100% that if employees have not been required to work, they should not be paid. However, if the workers were required to show up to work, they should be paid. That seems like just plain common sense.

51 posted on 10/05/2013 6:26:36 PM PDT by Terabitten (I'd rather have one Walker than fourteen runners.)
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To: shego

If anyone needs any other proof that both parties are pretty much the same, here it is.


52 posted on 10/05/2013 6:28:17 PM PDT by kiryandil (turning Americans into felons, one obnoxious drunk at a time (Zero Tolerance!!!))
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To: Slambat
The government only hires the unemployable and the most worthless and then pays them thousands of times more that what they are worth.

By your logic, all the veterans that go to work in the public sector are "unemployable and the most worthless?"

Wow.

53 posted on 10/05/2013 6:31:41 PM PDT by Terabitten (I'd rather have one Walker than fourteen runners.)
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To: shego

So they’ll continue to be paid as usual for doing nothing productive, and the default process will be even more interesting with much more debt piling up. Democrats will have quite a pile of it amassed by 2016. Republicans will be forced to play the bad guys and repudiate the debt.


54 posted on 10/05/2013 6:38:34 PM PDT by familyop
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To: Terabitten

That’s exactly what I said. If they work, they should be paid.

But again, while you may or may not be technically correct about the use of the word “furlough,” I bet you couldn’t find 1% of the people who are using the word that way. When they say “furloughed,” they are referring to those “non-essential” personnel who are not at work.


55 posted on 10/05/2013 6:40:04 PM PDT by EternalVigilance
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To: All

You may want to tone down a bit here. I am a vet who now works as a civilian in the DoD. I do logistics support for a weapons system. Since military maintain and contractors do engineering, I was non essential. I have supplies and parts in place at the deployed locations, for now. At some point, I may be recalled from furlough.

We want to work, we are conservatives, liberals, libertarians, and even low info folks, but we all work hard to make sure our warriors have the best gear they need.


56 posted on 10/05/2013 8:39:26 PM PDT by USAFJeeper (Who Dat Nation - Loving the Manning Face!)
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To: USAFJeeper

Thanks for posting that.


57 posted on 10/05/2013 9:23:53 PM PDT by Steve0113 (T)
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To: shego

Pay them if they work, and even when they don’t.

Temporary lay-off. Good times!
.....
We’re so lucky we’ve got ‘em. Good times!


58 posted on 10/06/2013 12:24:36 AM PDT by Eleutheria5 (End the occupation. Annex today.)
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To: arthurus
Furloughed workers should not get back pay. Instead they should get a small amount of severance pay. If they are not essential then they should not be working for the government. No exceptions for sentiment of fairness. 90% of the federal workforce should be placed back into the private world.

It would be really nice if folks would get a grasp of the "essential/non-essential" concept before spouting off. Whether or not one is essential is based on specific situations/crises and not on a day-to-day basis. There are times when active duty military are separated into essential/non-essential due to the mission at hand and the constraints of what is going on.

59 posted on 10/06/2013 2:58:15 AM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: trebb

90 % of the nonmilitary federal employees are utterly nonessential to maintain a Constitutional system. We do not need park rangers because it is not essential that the government own and land outside of DC. Military bases can and should be leased from the States or from private property owners. Federal welfare has no Constitutional basis and neither does federal regulation of medicine or insurance or 99% of what the federal government stifles/regulates. And the ETC. is huge. If you are a Tory rather than an American style conservative then you are concerned to “conserve” the status quo for which all those government workers are essential except the ones who could be eliminated if WF&A were “cleaned up.” which could only be done by appointing a Commission to clean it up with many thousands of new federal workers to do the studies which would recommend that many more thousands be hired to do the actual cleaning up &c et al v/v.


60 posted on 10/06/2013 4:52:39 AM PDT by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson ONLINEhttp://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/)
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