•Friday November 17th is the next deadline for Congress to prevent a government closure.
•New Speaker of the House is facing same struggles as his predecessor.
•Federal government employees face furloughs for first time since the 2018-2019 shutdown
Covering government shutdowns can be annoying. Obviously, however, not nearly as stressful and frustrating as it must be for the federal workforce. The past few times a shutdown has appeared like a sure thing, a last-minute move in Congress has kept the government running, the most recent example of this happened at the start of October. Back in December 2018, a government shutdown was looking rather unlikely until former President Trump decided not to sign the Congress-approved budgetary measure a few days before Christmas, propelling the country into the longest government shutdown in its history.
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At the time of writing this article, a shutdown is sadly looking pretty likely. The new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is bogged down in the same complications that doomed the previous speaker. His proposed solution has been called a “laddered” continuing resolution (CR) that would keep the government at current spending levels. Why the CR has been split into two “tiers” isn’t really clear and the inexperienced legislator from Louisiana is failing to both explain it properly and get enough Republican representatives to support it. Without them, Johnson will need Democratic votes and that will tarnish his image among his far-right GOP colleagues.
Money for Israel was included in the bill, but this funding was offset by cutting $14.3 billion from the IRS’ budget, meaning it won’t have support from Democrats. Ukraine is still hoping for aid from the US to help with the Russian invasion as it wasn’t included in the stop-gap measure that was passed at the start of last month.
Should there be a government shutdown at the end of this week, we will be here for our feds. We’ll provide resources to help and be available for any questions feds may have about their benefits, pay, or retirement. Check out our earlier article about Federal Pay During a Government Shutdown.
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Until Next Time,
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