The House just unanimously agreed to pay furloughed government employees once they have the money to do so. By what stretch of the imagination does it make sense to shut down the government and then pay the employees for the shutdown? I am apoplectic and you should be too.
Let me get this straight. You shut down the government because you don’t have the money to run it but then you continue to incur a liability just as if you had not shut down the government. So you get the worst of both worlds. You don’t get the government services but you continue to pay for them as if you were getting them. Is this like the realtors that get paid for not providing service? What am I missing here? I thought the whole point of the shutdown was that we didn’t have the money to pay these people.
Now I’m not a legal expert but it’s my understanding that the shutdown is mandated by the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal employees from “making or authorizing an expenditure from, or creating or authorizing an obligation under, any appropriation or fund in excess of the amount available in the appropriation or fund unless authorized by law.” So how does this work? Congress makes the laws so they can basically circumvent this act for purposes of paying government employees but they can’t pass a law putting these people back to work without raising the debt ceiling? I mean…if they are going to create inconsistent laws why not just go all the way and create more inconsistency? In other words, if they can pay them for this time period then why can’t they work?
What are these guys thinking? Somebody please explain this to me.
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