Contractors Watch The Calendar

Long-time, long-suffering feds appear to be taking those threats/warnings/rumors of an October 1 government shutdown in stride. They’ve been through this before.

Generally speaking, shutdowns don’t happen, and when they do, they rarely last long. And no fed has ever lost money or missed a payday because of a shutdown.

But for contractors, that could be different. As in a real, no-work-no-pay-shutdown.

Contractors are everywhere. Even the CIA has lots of them. In some agencies, contractor employees outnumber regular civil servants by a ratio of 6 to 1. Tens of thousands of former and retired federal (and military) personnel now work as private contractors.

So whether you are a contract employee or a regular fed, consider this e-mail from a retired government worker-turned-contractor. He agreed with yesterday’s column that shutdown talk shouldn’t worry regular government employees. But for contractors, he says the warning flag is flying. The failure of Congress to okay agency budgets for the upcoming October 1 fiscal year could mean payless paydays for many contractors:

It’s been awhile since I’ve written to you; retired over 5 years ago. Now I dabble part-time as a contractor to fund my fun.

We have been hearing this year is different for contractors. You are probably correct that feds have nothing to fear.

Apparently Congress issued new strict guidance that “planning purchase requests” without funding can not be used anymore. I’m sorry I don’t have the specifics. It seems that not even option year extensions will be exercised without a Continuing Resolution. Since time is short, a backlog is building for the contracts folks and without a CR many contractors may be receiving layoff notices in a few days. I’m sure it will all work out by mid October, but there is a chance that some contractor provided services may be disrupted on 1 October. Rob

Here’s another shutdown note:

Those of us long time feds know there will be no shut down this year. It’s an election year and neither party can afford to get blamed for it.

The last shut down, I was in training for 5 weeks in Orange County, CA. (Not bad heh?) 1995, just before Thanksgiving, if I recall correctly. We had 1 1/2 weeks of training left. And the big shut down. Management didn’t want to bring us back to turn around and return us. So we had a nice day off and went to the San Diego Zoo. The following day, they sent us home. I think we had three days off that time. So we were home for one day, and went back to work. We finished the training by reading the rest of the book and taking the tests.

The shut down before that was just one day, if I remember correctly. I only remember two shut downs, but I will have 25 years in March and the memory may be going! Linda in Montana

        Read more: Mike Causey

Shutdown Congress?

Here’s a note from a retired State Department type who has a plan to motivate Congress to do its job:

Been a reader for a number of years, dating back to Washington Post days. I’m recently retired from the State Department, and went through a number of govt shutdowns overseas, which weren’t fun but we got through OK (mostly by ignoring instructions from DC and declaring everybody an emergency employee, or noting that under local labor law we had to pay our FSN–Foreign Service Nationals = local staff–anyway so they might as well come in and work.

But how about this: anytime in the future a fiscal year opens without a Congressionally-approved budget passed, a continuing resolution is automatically put in place, AND all members of Congress go immediately on LWOP (benefits as well as pay), with a statutory provision that they will NEVER receive make-up pay. If Congress has passed and sent to the White House a budget bill, but the President hasn’t signed it, same thing applies, continuing resolution, and all White House salaries/benefits suspended. If Congress has passed, but President has vetoed, penalties apply to both branches of government.” Brian McIntosh

To check out yesterday’s column and for background on shutdowns of the past, click here.

Nearly Useless Factoid

You may think of sorbitol as an artificial sweetener, but it’s also found in apples, pears, peaches and prunes.

Oh, and in response to yesterday’s photo of Mike’s bad hair day, Andrew C. says “What really scared me was that picture of the leprechaun with your face on it. Now that was frightening. (I saved it, by the way.)”

What’s really, really scary is that there’s someone else in the world who saved that. sk

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

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