After sailing through the House on a 407-0 vote Saturday, a bill to guarantee back pay to furloughed federal employees now appears to have become a Senate bargaining chip in the stalemate over ending the partial government shutdown.
“I think it’s really premature to be dealing with that until we deal with the underlying problem,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said today, according to the website for Roll Call. “”We’ve offered a number of bills to try to alleviate some of the hardship, and . . . they’ve all been swatted down out of hand.”
Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., did not respond to an email asking whether Reid planned to bring the back pay legislation before the full Senate this week.
3 Comments
This is pure CEAP! How is it even considered that it is the fault of the federal employees?!
Oona – Nobody ever said that it was the federal employees’ fault. It is, however, our problem.
Why doesn’t the Senate get furloughed and lose their pay for a while. If anyone has shown themselves to be “nonessential” it’s them. They don’t do crap, especially not that crooked old curmudgeon Reid!