The federal government shutdown that reached its 19th day Sunday has resulted in tens of thousands of public employees being forced to work without getting paid.
But there’s one group of federal workers who are not being allowed to do their normal jobs even though their pay remains steady.
That would be the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson sent them home Sept. 19 and hasn’t called them back since, saying the House will get back to business once the Senate passes the GOP’s short-term funding bill to end the government shutdown — something it has failed to do 10 times so far.
Democratic representatives, including Hawaiʻi’s Jill Tokuda and Ed Case, have made trips back to Washington, D.C., anyway, to illustrate their readiness to work and chide their Republican colleagues for being no-shows.
Meanwhile, their offices are hearing from island constituents concerned about whether the government services they depend on will continue as the shutdown wears on.
While congressional Republicans want to pass a basic spending bill, Democrats contend they have little choice but to hold out for a measure that also extends expiring Affordable Care Act stipends for millions of Americans who otherwise will see big increases in their health insurance premiums.
During the lengthy House recess, Speaker Johnson has not sworn in Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, who won a House seat in a special election. Democrats point out that Grijalva likely represents the final vote needed to force the release of files from the Justice Department’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In an interview that has been edited for length and clarity, Tokuda spoke with Civil Beat on Wednesday about what is now the third-longest federal government shutdown in history.
Is your office hearing more than usual from constituents since the shutdown began?
We’ve been getting an uptick in calls and messages left at both our D.C. and Hawaii offices. From the beginning, folks had a lot of questions and concerns about their benefits, whether they’d still be getting their social security or Medicaid, EBT money.
I’ve also been reaching out to a lot of the federal employees, from air traffic controllers to TSA agents, social security and others, to try to check in on how they’re doing. Try to connect them with resources as much as possible.
The speaker has now announced that the recess in the House will continue at least through next week, more than a full month since the House passed the Republican version of the spending bill. Why do you think the speaker is keeping the House in recess?
All I can say is, since the Republicans left D.C., Democrats have come back at least twice, if not more, waiting to actually get work done, focused on trying to find a resolution where we could reopen government and protect life-saving health care for millions of Americans.
That’s a choice Republicans made to run and hide from health care for Americans. That’s a very definitive choice to literally stay away, hide from Washington and their job and their duty to their constituents, because for whatever reason, they cannot find it in their heart or soul to protect health care access for their constituents.
There’s health care, and that should be enough. But I’ll also remind you, Adelita Grijalva has literally been duly elected from the state of Arizona since, I believe, Sept. 23, so it’s been almost an entire month. She has also come back to Washington, D.C. She’s been waiting to get sworn in, and the speaker has absolutely defied his past practice of swearing in new members elected through a special election because she will be the 218th signature on the Epstein discharge petition.
So we’ve got Republicans running scared because they don’t want to save health care for Americans and they’re afraid of what’s in the Epstein files. That’s just the bottom line.
From a practical standpoint, what could the House be doing now during the shutdown, if it was in session?
If the House was in session right now, first and foremost, you could have Republicans in the House and the Senate sitting down with Democrats from the House and Senate and focusing on a path forward, a way to reopen government and keep health care. That’s what they could be doing is actually negotiating face to face instead of running away because they don’t want to provide Americans with the health care that they absolutely need.
Meanwhile their constituents are getting notification of how much their premiums are going to be going up, in some cases doubling or tripling. We’ve seen the kind of numbers coming out, and not necessarily from blue states. We’re talking from red states. So you know, they could be back doing the work of reopening government and saving health care.
One of the big fears right now, and I’ve heard it directly from providers, I’ve heard it from patients, is that things expired at the end of the fiscal year, like our telehealth and telephonic reimbursements allowing Medicare and Medicaid patients to be able to access these services. And for rural health centers and federally qualified health centers to provide this and to be reimbursed for it. That expired on Sept. 30.
We could be passing bills to extend those reimbursements, allowing people in rural and remote America, which is Hawaii, the ability to get telehealth visits, continue to get that health care they need through telemedicine.
Right now, those extensions can’t go through if we can’t even hold a hearing. I introduced a bill to allow for telehealth to continue in rural health centers and federally qualified health centers. That bill can’t get heard until Republicans come back — because they are the majority — and let us get back to work.
So you’ve personally made two trips back to D.C. since the shutdown occurred?
I have, literally, and I also came back two days before the shutdown started, because with all my Democratic colleagues, we were not just going to accept that government was shutting down. We were prepared. We were ready. We were waiting to start working on some kind of language that could keep government open and protect health care.
But as you know, Republicans refused to even come back to D.C., and I came back this week again, focused on people who are going to miss paychecks this week.
Let’s get back to work. Let’s focus on a path forward where we reopen government and save health care again.
Do members of Congress and their staff continue to get paid during the shutdown?
Members of Congress continue to get paid. Our staff do not get paid until we reopen government.
All of my staff are deemed essential, so they have been working. And if this shutdown does not end before the end of the month, they will not get a paycheck. Members of our staff get paid once a month, and so it’s at the end of the month. They got paid at the end of the last month. But for all the staff in Congress, if we go beyond the 31st they will not get a paycheck for October until we reopen government.
That’s got to be personally hard for you as a boss.
I mean literally looking at Capitol Police guarding the Capitol. They’re not getting paid too, right?
It’s very difficult for me as a boss, knowing that we have our staff out there looking out for federal workers that are scared and need help connecting with resources, the members of the public, constituents, who are worried about whether or not their benefits will continue to be provided.
In so many ways, our staff are right there on the front line, just like TSA workers, just like our ag inspectors out there, just like our Park Service. Think of all the Social Security, the IRS, think of all the federal workers out there that are continuing to do their job and just need this shutdown finished.
Which is why it’s so frustrating that Republicans refuse to come back to D.C., refuse to even sit at the table with the Democratic leadership to talk about how we reopen government.
I was walking all around the Capitol the last two days, and the previous time I was back as well, and I can tell you there were no (House) Republicans to be found. Maybe one here or there, I don’t know, but I did not see any Republicans. So this has been happening week after week, where Democrats have been going back, present and ready to negotiate and reopen government, and Republicans have failed to get back.
We don’t have gavels. We can’t actually hold an official hearing and have witnesses or call anyone back. But what we do instead is roundtables. We do shadow hearings, we do press conferences. I did a roundtable today (Wednesday) focused on health care and the impacts of health care on women and families. We did other events focused on domestic violence. This is Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Month. As a caucus we gathered to focus on health care.
So there was a number of different things that we did in an organized fashion when we came back this week again to highlight the stark contrast to being present, being ready to work, sharing stories from across the country of how health care access is life-saving, and that’s why we’re in this fight.
Even during a shutdown, if the House was in session, you could also be dealing with non-shutdown-related issues, right?
We could be dealing with a number of different things. There’s no reason we couldn’t continue to pass bills and focus on appropriations measures as well. There’s always more work to be done than Congress ever has time for, I can tell you that much.
So I don’t understand how they can even wrap their brains around taking an extra month off and not being present and doing work that the people elected them to do. It’s an embarrassment. It’s outrageous.
By: Richard Wiens
Source: Honolulu Civil Beat