There is no such thing as a clean bipartisan agreement under the current operating rules. The Republicans controlled both houses of congress, and still worked together with Democrats to come to a relatively clean bipartisan agreement in late December that satisfied both parties and would have averted a shutdown in the first place. The President had signaled that he would sign the budget bill if it reached him, and then decided that he would not authorize a bill without an additional $5.7 billion towards a portion of the Border Wall he has long promised, and leadership decided they would not proceed without his support, regardless of how members of congress felt or may vote otherwise. This entire process began before control of the House passed to the party that opposed the President's policies as a general matter. The refusal to open the government without the additional funding came from a clean bipartisan agreement being thrown out, and anything that comes out of this will be neither clean nor truly bipartisan. There will be no compromise on the absolute terms laid out by the President, only one side conceding to the other, and their supporters will loathe them for it for a while to come, putting us back into the same toxic cycle that placed us in this situation; and that I would consider it sadly very likely that we may see more shutdown battles in the future, not only during this presidency, but as with broken precedent, many to come, risking the same threats to both people and animals. I am not saying this from a specific perspective on current leadership, but as a general outlook on how our politics has transformed in the last thirty years. As a relevant to our hobby side note, the President's son has compared the proposed wall to a zoo fence.
Aren't there grounds to sue the government for breaking the contract of employment that they entered into?
From the zoo on Facebook: The resolution however would only keep the government open for three weeks ( Feb. 15th)
A union representing many federal agencies (AFGE) has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of employees seeking damages for violating the Fair Trade Act.
I don't disagree with the attempt, but I doubt that the AFGE will be successful here since the government is giving back pay. I am not saying the federal employees didn't suffer and don't deserve more stability, I just don't see the system allowing much more.
Simply, the law needs to change so that employee salaries are quarantined from this sort of chicanery. Australia structures its appropriations bills differently. Here there is a separate bill that funds routine, ordinary government expenditure, including public servant wages. Importantly, this bill does not contain any funding for new projects, which have to be passed in a separate bill. That way the parliament can battle it out over the government’s agenda without holding innocent employees and welfare recipients hostage. The American Congress can very easily achieve the same thing, but chooses not to.
