Longest shutdown in history of U.S.
WASHINGTON — The longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history ground into a fourth week Saturday with President Donald Trump showing fresh defiance on Twitter, congressional Democrats firmly resolved to resist his calls for a border wall and unpaid workers caught in the middle.
“We will be out for a long time unless the Democrats come back from their ‘vacations’ and get back to work,” Mr. Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “I am in the White House ready to sign!”
Mr. Trump’s statements came a day after some 800,000 federal employees missed an expected paycheck, and after he tamped down speculation that he might declare a national emergency to begin construction on his wall and break the impasse. Instead, he told reporters Friday, “we want Congress to do its job.”
While they may never be precisely calculated, the costs of the shutdown are likely already into
the billions, and they continue to mount. Beyond the likely cost of paying furloughed employees for work not done, additional costs include eventual overtime costs to deal with backlogs of work and the indirect impacts of various shuttered programs and services.
The Obama administration estimated the direct costs of the two-week October 2013 shutdown at $2.5 billion, while estimating another $2 billion to $6 billion in lost economic output. Those figures did not include miscellaneous other fiscal impacts, including millions in lost user fees and interest owed on late federal payments.
Federal workers who have been forced to work without pay have started going to the courts to challenge the shutdown.
In one major action, five federal employee unions representing a combined 244,000 members working in coastal Virginia, southern California, central Montana and the Washington area filed suit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on Friday, demanding full compensation for time and overtime worked over the three weeks of the shutdown.
“This lawsuit is not complicated: We do not believe it is lawful to compel a person to work without paying them,” said Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, one of the groups suing. “With this lawsuit we’re saying, ‘No, you can’t pay workers with I.O.U.s.’ That will not work for us.”
Congress on Friday passed legislation to guarantee back pay for all workers affected by the shutdown — both those who have been furloughed and those who have continued working as personnel deemed essential to the protection of life and property. Mr. Trump said Friday that he would sign it.
In past shutdowns, both furloughed and nonfurloughed workers have gotten back pay, though federal contractors and their employees are generally left uncompensated.
Local authorities have stepped up to aid workers and families affected by the missing paychecks. Tampa International Airport, starting Monday, is hosting a food bank for about 700 federal employees working at the airport, as well as offering other assistance with day-to-day needs.
In his tweets Saturday, Mr. Trump reacted sharply to a televised comment that he lacks a strategy for ending the shutdown. The tweets came shortly after an NBC “Today” panel with network reporters Peter Alexander and Kristen Welker, as well as Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker discussed the topic.
“I do have a plan on the Shutdown,” he said. “But to understand that plan you would have to understand the fact that I won the election, and I promised safety and security for the American people. Part of that promise was a Wall at the Southern Border. Elections have consequences!”
But Democrats are fully aware of their own mandate — particularly in the House, where the party gained the majority for the first time in eight years by winning 40 seats in a midterm election suffused with Mr. Trump’s apocalyptic warnings about the threats posed by illegal immigrants.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Friday called the record-breaking duration of the shutdown “unfortunate” and “totally unnecessary.” House Democrats have spent their first days in the majority passing various spending bills that would reopen government, bills negotiated by Senate Republicans, but none have included the wall money Mr. Trump is demanding. More such votes are expected next week.
In other developments:
• Miami International Airport closed one of its concourses for half the day Saturday. Airport officials said they plan to do the same Sunday and Monday out of concerns they wouldn’t have enough employees to operate all the security checkpoints.
• The Federal Aviation Administration says it has brought about 500 furloughed safety inspectors back to work and expects more to return next week, potentially easing strains on the aviation system amid a partial federal government shutdown. Most of the FAA’s 3,000 safety inspectors have been sidelined during the 22-day shutdown.
• Transportation Security Administration workers who manned checkpoints Dec. 22 will be paid, despite the federal shutdown that began the previous day, and they also will receive a $500 bonus for working during the busy Christmas season.
• The shutdown of the federal government over the president’s campaign promise to build a wall along the southern U.S. border is taking its toll on already backed-up immigration courts. Hearings for non-detained immigrants are being taken off the calendar because of the lack of funding and will have to be rescheduled when the partial shutdown ends. The problem will be finding an opening for those cases on judges’ calendars, which are already filled for the next three years or more.
• Craft breweries are missing out on millions of dollars in out-of-state sales because of the government shutdown. To sell new beers across state lines, breweries have to get permits approved for their formulas by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. The federal agency is closed during the shutdown.