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Moran-Connolly Bill to Provide Retroactive Pay for Furloughed Federal Employees

Washington, DC, October 4, 2013
House GOP Leadership Agrees to Bring Bill to Floor for a Vote on Saturday. Read more.
Legislation to provide retroactive pay to furloughed federal employees will come to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for a vote on Saturday, Congressman Gerry Connolly said today.
The legislation – cosponsored by Connolly, Congressman Jim Moran, and a bipartisan group of 152 House members – would ensure that all federal employees receive retroactive pay for the duration of a federal government shutdown, regardless of individual furlough status. Thirty Republicans have cosponsored the bill.
“After weathering three years of pay freezes, pension cuts, and insulting and demeaning comments from the House leadership and many other House Republicans, our hard-working federal workers are now faced with a loss of pay through no fault of their own,” Connolly said. “It is shameful that federal workers are paying the price for the government shutdown. We want to resolve this issue now and make these dedicated public servants whole when the shutdown ends.”
Connolly’s 11th Congressional District of Virginia contains more than 60,000 federal workers.
“I’ve heard from many federal workers who are worried sick that they won’t be able to pay their bills and mortgages because of the amount of income they will lose due to the furlough,” Connolly said. “Their anxiety is heightened because of the uncertainty of when they will even receive their next paycheck.”
Take the case of the mother of two children in diapers, a federal worker who is the sole wage-earner in her household, who worries how she will be able to pay her mortgage, car payment, Fairfax County personal property taxes, and day care fees this month. Or think of the plight of the civilian employee of the Navy who has experienced two furloughs and a mass shooting this year. Living paycheck to paycheck, this federal worker worries about feeding his family of five and staying afloat, like tens of thousands of other federal employees in Northern Virginia and across the Commonwealth.
Or the situation faced by the single mother of a teenage son in Fairfax, furloughed from her job at FEMA, who is frantically applying for retail store jobs, unemployment, reduced school-lunch for her child, and other services to try and make up for her loss in income.
And then there is the case of the NASA team leader in charge of solar system exploration and the rover mission to Mars. Now furloughed, he still traveled to Washington earlier this week to accept a prestigious award for outstanding federal workers from the Partnership for Public Service.
“There are hundreds of families in my district who will face similar financial hardships or worse if we do not guarantee they will receive their regular paychecks when House Republicans finally agree to end their shutdown and allow federal employees to return to their jobs“ Connolly said. “It is unacceptable for our federal workers to be held hostage because the House leadership continues their repeated efforts to defund a law that has already been approved by Congress, signed by the President, and ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Connolly and Moran introduced an identical retroactive pay bill in the last Congress when it appeared that there was the possibility of a government shutdown. In previous government shutdowns, federal employees have received retroactive pay and Connolly said, “this latest shutdown should be no different.”
Connolly said, “Federal employees do not deserve to be punished.”
The bill – The Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act – is expected to come to the House floor during a rare House session on Saturday.
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Text of The Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act:

A BILL


To provide for the compensation of furloughed Federal

employees.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act’’.

SEC. 2. COMPENSATION FOR FURLOUGHED FEDERAL EMPLOYEES.

Federal employees furloughed as a result of any lapse in appropriations which begins on or about October 1, 2013, shall be compensated at their standard rate of compensation, for the period of such lapse in appropriations, as soon as practicable after such lapse in appropriations ends.
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