WASHINGTON – Federal employee unions and Democratic members of Congress from Maryland, D.C. and Virginia denounced House Republicans at a press conference on Tuesday for the financial pain caused to federal employees as a result of a government shutdown.
“We’re here because we’re concerned about the operation of the United States government,” said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Mitchellville outside the Capitol on Tuesday afternoon. “We represent a lot of federal employees” in our districts.
In a political game of chicken, congressional Republicans sought this week to pass a spending bill that defunded the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But Democrats flatly rejected defunding the new law, parts of which went into effect Tuesday, and nearly 800,000 federal employees were furloughed as a result of the shutdown.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Mitchellville, speaks outside the Capitol Tuesday, lamenting the economic hit federal workers will feel in his district from the government shutdown. CNS photo by Jason Ruiter.
Hoyer called Republicans “irrational” and “unreasonable” and said that if members of Congress were a board of directors in a public corporation, “stockholders would fire us.”
In addition to Hoyer, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Baltimore; Rep. John Delaney, D-Potomac; Democratic D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., were surrounded by members from several unions carrying signs that read “We Want To Work!”
“Many see this is as a beltway issue” which is not true, said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. “Eighty percent (of federal employees) work outside the beltway.”
Polling conducted by Quinnipiac University last week shows that although Americans are ambivalent about Obamacare, three-fourths disapprove of using a government shutdown as political leverage.
“Republicans have dug themselves a hole,” Cummings said.
Rep. Andy Harris, R-Cockeysville, Maryland’s lone Republican member of Congress, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. The voicemail in his Washington office had a message saying: “In case of a lapse of appropriated funds…normal operations of the United States government would be suspended until funding is restored…we may not be able to answer the phone.”
Harris released a statement Monday saying he’d vote in favor of a resolution which would delay an individual mandate to purchase an Obamacare health insurance package.
Octavia Hall, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1401 at Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility in southern Maryland, showed up to work Tuesday, opened a letter, and read that she wasn’t needed.
“To be honest, they always threaten to do something like this. We were kind of in disbelief,” Hall said. Hall, who lives in Hoyer’s district in Waldorf and has worked for the federal government for 20 years, lives paycheck to paycheck.
“That means I have no savings account. Nothing set aside,” she said. “It really hit in reality. It changed the way I think about life and how I spend my money and how I need to save more.”
Including Tuesday, Hall has been furloughed seven days this year. She plans to look for a second job to offset the costs and says her co-workers are in similar situations.
According to the Quinnipiac University poll, 58 percent of Americans blame both parties for the gridlock in Washington. Twenty-eight percent blame Republicans and 10 percent blame Democrats.
“I think everybody played a part in this,” Hall said. “We’re just like pawns.”
By Jason Ruiter
Capital News Service
Patricia Carroll says
Editor,
I writing in response to government shutdown article. My Husband works at APG. Many of his staff workers have been furloughed. Theses men and women provide well needed logistical support for our troops among other things. He is a Navy vet of 13 yrs.. We are originally from NJ but had to relocate to MD in order to keep his job in 2011. I don’t think the public is aware of sacrifices people in the military and their families make. It’s so easy to ignore and the Republicans have been demonizing federal workers at the expense of the military. Talking out both sides of their mouths. Let the Congress lose their pay while they hold the country hostage. They are cowards and they don’t deserve ore respect or our vote. I wrote to Andy Harris but he is useless to his constituents.