It was just last week when Trump stooge Kevin Hassett suggested that furloughed federal workers were actually better off for being caught in the middle of the President’s ongoing quest to extort taxpayers for $5.7 billion to erect a steel fence along the southern border.
“A huge share of government workers were going to take vacation days, say between Christmas and New Year’s and then we have a shutdown, and so they can’t go to work”, Hassett Kevin-‘splained last Thursday, before characterizing this as a situation where federal employees “have the vacation, but they don’t have to use their vacation days.”
He continued, noting that because workers get their back pay when the government reopens, they are, “in some sense, better off.”
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Trump’s Shutdown Is Now Longest In US History — Are We ‘Great Again’ Yet?
That is characteristically tone deaf and while it might be some semblance of true, it ignores the obvious, which is that some federal workers likely live paycheck to paycheck and so to them, this is, like Ron Burgundy, “kind of a big deal”.
Underscoring the notion that this does in fact matter for families are reports that Kraft Heinz is opening a free “store” in D.C. where “government staff can fill up a bag” with staple food items. “Parents should not have to worry about putting dinner on the table”, the company’s head of marketing Sergio Eleuterio said Tuesday.
Well guess what? The above-mentioned Kevin Hassett showed up on Fox Business yesterday and now he sounds a bit more concerned than he did just days ago. In fact, one of his own staffers has started driving an Uber to make ends meet. Listen to this:
It’s not funny for the staffer, but it sure is funny for Hassett, who was previously predisposed to downplaying this whole thing. And do take a moment to revel in Kevin’s belabored attempt to explain his newly-dour assessment. To wit:
Yeah, [we’ve] been studying it hard as this has gone on and [we] found that yeah, the damage is a little bit worse.
Imagine that. Here’s the New York Times summarizing:
Mr. Hassett said on Tuesday that the administration now calculates that the shutdown reduces quarterly economic growth by 0.13 percentage points for every week that it lasts – the cumulative effect of lost work from contractors and furloughed federal employees who are not getting paid and who are investing and spending less as a result. That means that the economy has already lost nearly half a percentage point of growth from the four-week shutdown. (Last year, economic growth for the first quarter totaled 2.2 percent.)
Now you’d think, given all of the above, and also given the increasingly dire warnings from Wall Street (Jamie Dimon mused on Tuesday that if this goes on too long, growth could fall to zero), Trump would be inclined to reconsider the relative merits of keeping the government closed in the interest of procuring funds for his vanity project; especially with multiple bills having been tabled that would end this farce immediately.
But this is Trump we’re talking about, so instead, he’s just going to go ahead and force even more people to work without pay. Specifically, he’s making folks who are responsible for processing tax refunds come back to work.
“The Trump administration on Tuesday said it is calling back tens of thousands of federal workers to fulfill key government tasks, including disbursing tax refunds, overseeing flight safety and inspecting the nation’s food and drug supply, as it seeks to blunt the impact of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history”, the Washington Post writes, summing things up.
While it makes sense that we wouldn’t want flight and food safety to be imperiled, it seems pretty clear that the effort to make sure tax refunds are processed is aimed at ameliorating the economic impact of the impasse. And if you think for a second that has anything to do with making sure families have some extra money, you are overlooking the obvious, which is that Trump doesn’t want to see a scenario where those tax refunds don’t go towards consumer spending, a situation that could potentially exacerbate any drag from lost paychecks for furloughed workers and also from the negative wealth effect of the Q4 stock market crash.
“The Trump administration is calling back some 46,000 furloughed employees, according to an updated contingency plan released Tuesday, with many put to work issuing tax refunds even though the Treasury Department previously decided a shutdown would bar the activity”, Bloomberg notes, adding that “The National Treasury Employees Union is suing the federal government for making those employees work without pay, arguing that forcing them to process tax refunds falls outside the scope of activities that should be permitted during a shutdown.”
On Tuesday, a federal judge shot down a plea by that union (and other federal employees) who sought to force the government to pay them or else let them go and find other jobs.
Hilariously, the staffing shortage at the IRS is set to collide with Trump’s tax cuts to make this filing season an absolute nightmare. Simply put: the IRS is being forced to navigate the biggest tax overhaul in decades with a skeleton crew.
Throw in the fact that the people who are forced to work will be effectively handing out money (refunds) to other people without being paid themselves, and you’ve got a truly absurd situation that’s bound to leave some employees disgruntled at their predicament.
Oh, well! There’s always Uber!
Good ol’, Kevin. He’s my favorite!
Thankfully, no amount of imagination will result in me being declared “essential.” But what’s most important is that each day furloughed is a day closer to retirement. Honestly, the most depressing thing about the current situation is being exposed to the truly insane number of people who genuinely believe (or claim to believe) that the federal government is useless and unnecessary. This is usually accompanied by rants about the DMV and how the gob’ment took their kids away from them–you know, by the secret Federal Bureau of Pickup Trucks and Federal Agency of Taking Kids away from Angry Ex-Cons.
The takeaway is that a ridiculous number of people have no idea what the federal government does and how, without it, the economy would collapse. I had an imaginary conversation with such a person the other day. I began, “Mr. President . . . “
I work for a defense contractor and we have just been told we are going to be furloughed. Unlike direct government employees we will not get back pay when the shutdown finishes.
Google assures me that someone will sign and mail my social security check.
“While previous shutdowns have led to the furlough of Social Security employees and some services, a full-year funding agreement for the Social Security Administration was reached in September so the agency is not affected this time around.” https://www.businessinsider.com/government-shutdown-2018-social-security-checks-still-paid-2018-1
Here’s another thing I thought about — assface hosted the champion Clemson team and fed them cold fries and hamberders from fast food joints; apparently the WH does not have kitchen staff to cook a meal. So who is feeding his fat ass while the kitchen is furloughed?
I think he has one of his hotels close to the WH with a fully staffed kitchen – could have cooked and delivered meals to the WH celebration, of course that would have cost him money. Oh yeah, he bragged about paying for the fast food — must have been cheaper than really paying for the hotel kitchen bill.
I did read that he had suggested the first lady and the second lady could handle the Clemson dinners – he said they could make salads. total buffoon.
Yes, he purchased Washington’s Old Post Office, a few blocks from the WH, and converted it into a Trump Hotel–that’s the property that is at issue in the emoluments cases. Part of the property is designated a Historic Landmark and my understanding is that he made sure it has remained open despite the shutdown, so his guests can enjoy it. (Side note, I used to finish long training runs with a smoothie at the food court there, and the above is truly, truly depressing.)
The Clemson meal was truly hysterical (although you have to feel bad for the players for whom this will be their lifelong memory of their one trip to the White House). I’m honestly surprised he didn’t come up with the most stereotypical racist meal he could think of with his Very Large Brain (TM). Maybe this was, who knows.
Maybe some of his friends called him and asked for their tax returns.
You know, to buy some „pleasure boats“.