A shutdown that would halt pay for military families and government workers comes at a particularly precarious time for many households that are already struggling financially.
With six kids under the age of 15 to support, Stephen Booth, a police officer for the Air Force in Kansas, doesn’t have room in his budget for a missed paycheck.
But like millions of other government employees across the country, Booth is bracing for his pay to stop indefinitely at the end of the month as Congress careers toward a government shutdown.
House Republicans left Thursday unable to reach a compromise within their ranks over a new budget, including funds for the Defense Department, with a handful of conservative holdouts demanding additional spending cuts. Unless Congress acts, the federal government will not be able to pay its 4 million employees after Sept. 30.
Only a very limited set of the DoD shuts down when Congress doesn’t pass a budget. Efforts related to national security (which most of DoD falls under) continue regardless. A “police officer for the Air Force in Kansas” has little to worry about, even if he’s a contractor. National security functions continue when the government shuts down.
Also past shutdowns didn’t represent a “missed paycheck” for those affected, but rather a delayed one. Everyone got back-pay when past shutdowns ended. This isn’t a guarantee - Congress has to pass it as part of the spending bills - but it has always happened.
Millions of federal civilians and contractors will be furloughed during a shutdown, and that’s a very bad thing. But the military angle in this article is just plain false.
Many people are not in a position to have a delayed paycheck. It’s not even remotely acceptable. If your angle is, calm down the military is required to keep working and only some of them will be impacted, you have the wrong angle.
I’m not remotely saying that it’s not a big deal for the people impacted. I’ve been one of those and it was horrible - you don’t get paid and you’re not allowed/don’t have time to go get another job (the longest shutdown so far was 34 days).
I’m saying that the author of this article hasn’t done their research, because while millions will be impacted by a shutdown, military families are largely not among them.
The military personnel will not be paid during the shutdown just like the government employees. DoD personnel that are emergency essential will have to keep working but that is a small fraction of the civilian workforce. Yes, everyone will be paid backpay (including furloughed civilians), but the point is that a lot of people cannot financially handle getting their paycheck late. Especially when there is no idea when the government will start back up.
Those military people are expected to keep working, but they do not get a paycheck for that work. They’re still expected to commute to work every day, but with no money to do it.
Civilian employees will get it all paid back (so it’s basically an extra paid vacation for them). With what most of them make (that I interact with), if they can’t take responsibility for simple budgeting for a couple of weeks - that’s their own shitty fault.
Should Congress not put us in this situation - absolutely! They need to loose all their pay (i.e. no later payback) for at least twice as long as the shutdown is. I know, won’t matter to the vast majority of them.