government shutdown

House Votes to Pay Furloughed Workers Eventually

Photo: Chris Maddaloni Images/Getty

We still don’t know when the government shutdown will end, or how, but on Saturday, the House of Representatives answered at least one question that has remained open since it started: The lower chamber voted 407-0 to retroactively pay 800,000 furloughed workers when this is all over. The Senate and White House are both expected to support the bill, Associated Press reports, but there’s no set timeline for them to pass it. At least one Republican Democratic representative is already taking way too much credit for this act of basic fairness. “It’s just wrong for hundreds of thousands of federal employees not to know whether they’re going to be make to make their mortgage payment. Many of them live from paycheck to paycheck,” Rep. Jim Moran, a Virginia Republican Democrat, said on Saturday. Of course, they still don’t know when that next paycheck is coming.