1.4 Million Federal Workers Go Unpaid
Next up: our armed forces.
NPR (“It’s supposed to be payday for many federal workers. Instead, they’re getting nothing“) starts with a discussion of hundreds of furloughed federal workers waiting in long lines for boxes of free food before getting to the details:
For many federal workers, Friday is supposed to be payday. Instead, they are getting nothing. No partial pay. No sign of when their paychecks might resume.
[…]
Altogether, about 1.4 million civilian federal employees across the country are going without pay, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Roughly half of them are furloughed. The other half has been deemed essential and so is continuing to work.
For many people in both groups, the lapse in congressional appropriations has brought on new financial strain in a year that has already been tough.
“This whole fiscal year — 2025 — I was worried about my job, worried about getting RIF’d,” says Jay, a furloughed worker from the National Institutes of Health, referring to the reductions in force, or layoffs, that have already hit a number of agencies. “It was draining, emotionally draining. Now the reality is setting in when you’re not getting checks and you need to provide for your family.”
Jay, who asked to be identified by only his first name out of fear of losing his job, carried his two boxes away from the food distribution site in a stroller. He has a 1-year-old and a 5-year-old waiting for him at home.
In Tampa, Fla., Tierra Carter is still going to work, answering calls placed to the Social Security Administration’s 1-800 number. Carter, who serves as a union representative with the American Federation of Government Employees, says the lack of a paycheck has forced her to take out loans and seek a hardship withdrawal from her 401(k).
“I kind of feel like I’m in a pool and I’m trying to swim to the top, but every time I get to the middle, I’m getting knocked back down,” she says.
My wife and I would ordinarily have been paid yesterday; we weren’t. Additionally, our previous checks were 25% smaller than usual, since we were paid only for the last seven days of September and half a day (necessary to conduct “shutdown procedures”) on October 1. Thankfully, we have enough savings to weather this for a while.
Many, obviously, do not.
That civil servants are lining up to get welfare boxes and having to take out loans to pay their bills because Congress can’t do its job is shameful. That more than half of them are having to do so despite continuing to do their jobs is outrageous.
Alas, civil servants are not a sympathetic class. Most Americans think we’re overpaid and lazy.
The uniformed military, on the other hand, is widely admired. They only got their mid-month paychecks because the Trump administration shifted billions of dollars Congress appropriated for research and development to payroll. Unless they pull off that trick again, troops will not get paid next Friday. The Senate is in recess through Monday. That some anonymous donor has contributed $130 million toward military pay is interesting; it’s still roughly $6.4 billion shy.
NYT reports the donor of the 130 million is no longer anonymous. It’s Timothy Mellon, a reclusive billionaire who put a lot of money into the 2024 Trump campaign. He has a WIKI page, rich fruitcake. Along with Richard Mellon Scaife, proof that indeed the sins of the father may be visited on us to the third and fourth generation.
What Justice Brandeis said, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
Shameless and outrageous are two watchwords for this administration.
@gVOR10:
This is bonkers. That he would think donating his money to pay military salaries is a good idea, that the government would actually accept it, and that the president would talk about it like it’s part of a solution. Mellon’s donation “will cover about one-third of one day’s pay for the force,” per the Politico story, so maybe Mellon would be better off using his paid-for influence to help convince the president to find a government funded solution to paying military salaries.
@gVOR10: Mellon was the 2nd largest donor (after Musk) to Trump in 2024 ($150- 190 million depending on source). He also was behind RFK Jr campaign donating $25 million — with intent to siphon off Dem voters, which seemed to have worked.
As the Republiqans want to trun back the clock, and the tech bros supporting them ramble on and on about innovation, I propose a compromise: The Department of Military Aediles.
This turns back the clock over 2,000 years to the Roman republic, and it creates a new kind of cabinet department. Best of both worlds.
What it does is collect money from the oligarchs to pay military salaries. Finally a good use for all that stock value uselessly accumulating in the chief nazi’s portfolio.
Of course, mission and policy creep and all, the oligarchs will eventually shoulder more of the military’s costs past payroll. Ah, such is life. What are you gonna do about it?
@Eusebio: NYT noted, in their inimitable style,
“(A)ppears”, “potential”? It’s effing illegal! Although one can never be sure of these things under Dread Justice Roberts*.
* Saw that this morning and stole it, as I hope everyone will. He claims to be concerned about the respect due the Court. Make it clear he damn well should be.
It seems the support staff at the White House is deemed “essential.” I wonder why? Can’t the folks change out their own toilet paper? And clean up the large amount of dust from the demolition?
@Kathy:
Or you can have the system of the Late Roman Republic, where the oligarchs funded their own legions, and the legionaries primary loyalty came to be to the magnates that paid them and provided for their pensions.
After all, what could possibly go wrong?
(See also multiple similar cases in more recent European history. Or China, for that matter.)
It has to be said, from the perspective of any European state, the US budgetary system is utterly farcical.
There has never,that I can recall, been in post-WW2 Europe or the UK, anything like the US “shutdowns”.
Not even once, never mind on a depressingly frequent basis.
The US now seems to have all the disadvantages of a extreme “separation of powers”, regarding incoherent administration, but few of the purported benefits regarding checks on the “over mighty”.
@JohnSF:
How else is an illegal South African immigrant to become president?