Fedweek

While a push for a vote on the new Senate bill would represent some movement, approval there is not certain, given the overall deadlock on Capitol Hill over the shutdown. Image: Kosoff/Shutterstock.com

Senate Republican leaders have raised the prospect of calling a vote, possibly within days, on a bill to immediately pay federal employees working unpaid during the partial government shutdown.

The bill, S-3012, would immediately appropriate funds for pay and benefits of federal employees “excepted” from being furloughed for periods of work performed during the current lapse—retroactive to its start October 1—as well as in any future lapse.

Estimates of how many employees are working unpaid vary, but the number is in the range of 1 million out of a federal workforce outside the self-funding USPS of about 2.2 million. About 500,000, mostly at the VA, remain in paid status due to advance funding or other special funding sources, while about 600,000 are on furlough.

A half-dozen Republicans had introduced the bill late last week, as most federal employees either on furlough or working unpaid reached the October 18 end of the first full pay period of the shutdown. Pay distributions for that period are to be made late this week or early next week, and in most cases will be payless.

There would be a partial payment in cases where agencies had managed to keep some employees in paid status for a time by drawing on other available funding, as happened most prominently at the IRS. (The previous pay distribution, covering the biweekly period ending October 4, contained pay through September 30.)

Further, the FBI has said it has reprogrammed funds pay its roughly 13,000 special agents, much as the Pentagon reshuffled certain defense funding to meet the military payroll last week.

DHS similarly has said it will pay the 70,000 law enforcement officers of that department, retroactive to the start of the shutdown. The status of law enforcement officers of other agencies is not certain.

While a push for a vote on the new Senate bill would represent some movement, approval there is not certain, given the overall deadlock on Capitol Hill over the shutdown. That chamber has repeatedly fallen short of the 60 votes needed to pass either a Republican-sponsored bill to provide a temporary funding extension or a Democratic-sponsored one.

Some Democrats have expressed concern that the new bill would be cited as solving the pay issue, leaving back pay for furloughed employees—who by law also are to receive retroactive pay, although the Trump administration has questioned that entitlement—in limbo.

Senate passage would send the bill to the House, which Republican leaders there have kept out of session since September 19 as a way to pressure the Senate to approve the GOP-sponsored bill. There have been no signs of change in that strategy.

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See also,

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