Latest Breaking News

LIKE THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO DO this past year and bring staff back on covered by each, once that is done.

The GOP is doing an "all or nothing C.R." threat while they waste time on political gamesmanship.

During the Gingrich shutdown in 1995 - 1996 (a total of 26 days with a brief gap between two lapses and a short-term C.R. separating those lapse periods), my agency was one of the few (I think there were only 3 Departments funded back then - Agriculture, Treasury, Defense) that actually had funding. The other 9 or so weren't and those employees were furloughed without pay.

Every day during that shutdown, I walked into my old hulking multi-agency building, and was greeted to empty floors, offices and corridors.

But the entire government WASN'T shut down back then because there WERE those couple of individual appropriations that were done, and they should have completed for the rest (even doing them as "Minibus" or "Omnibus" combos) before it went on so long.

During the Carnival Cruz "Green Eggs and Ham" shutdown of 2013, my agency had no appropriations, so I was furloughed, without pay, for 17 days.