<p>Medicare payments seem to be not happening</p>
<p>S was just reclassified from essential to nonessential and has decided to fly to HI for a visit. It’s a huge surprise, but I’m very happy. :)</p>
<p>@CountingDown - visa are handled by the country you are traveling to, not the State Dept, so he should be OK.</p>
<p>“DIL’s green card arrived on Saturday.”</p>
<p>This is a huge revenue generation area for Homeland Security. They can’t shut it down.</p>
<p>Congrats btw. Didn’t realize they are married already.</p>
<p>I think CountingDown’s husband is a federal employee. If the government is shut down, no trip.</p>
<p>HImom, I didn’t know employers could move from essential to nonessential. That’s a bit mean (“nah, on second thought you’re not needed right now”). but I’m happy for you.</p>
<p>Slate has studied the difference in FB emoticons since the shutdown:</p>
<p>[The</a> government shutdown is making the emoticons in Washington, D.C., sadder.](<a href=“The government shutdown is making the emoticons in Washington, D.C., sadder.”>The government shutdown is making the emoticons in Washington, D.C., sadder.)</p>
<p>It’s weird for him and us that there was a reclassification but he took it as time to leave the DC area where people are in a big funk and spend some time with family. Weird that they reclassified him and his office as I thought more folks were returning to work rather than being told to stay home. Like everyone else, he’s disgusted and decided he wanted a change. The extended family is excited that he’s arriving today!</p>
<p>We are happy about the visit and cleaned his room out (it had become a storage room in his absence).</p>
<p>My young cousin got his visa late last week and was back on the air as of Monday.</p>
<p>I heard from a former colleague at the Census Bureau that they are all furloughed. Since they are part time flexible hours workers, I doubt that they will receive any pay at all. Most of them get no benefits, but a few who have gotten enough hours for long enough to be classified as permanent part time do get access to limited benefits, BUT retaining those benefits means working at least X hours per quarter. This could result in loss of benefits for them. Apparently those who are in that permanent part time group can apply for unemployment, but I don’t think that the rest are eligible.</p>
<p>In addition, the data they normally gather will not be collected. If the bureau doesn’t conduct the monthly CPS survey, it will be the first time since about 1940 that the monthly employment data wasn’t collected, which means that the Bureau of Labor Statistics will not have much to announce on the first Friday of next month.</p>
<p>DH says that there are folks in his agency who handle contacting embassies for visas, and since all of those folks are furloughed, it could be sitting on someone’s desk in his building but he has no idea. He’s traveling on official business, so the visa would apply to his gov’t passport, not his civilian one, if that makes any difference in the visa process. In any event, if the gov’t is still shut down, the trip is a no-go. </p>
<p>He had long-scheduled cataract surgery today, but I haven’t heard if sick days will be paid at some point. It is what it is. He has been doing 12-14 hour days most of the time since the shutdown, though a couple times he has come home while it’s still light outside.</p>
<p>texaspg, S1 & DIL were married in a civil ceremony in August 2012 (her employer’s law firm who handles this stuff screwed up the H-1B app and caused her to just miss getting in the annual quota – by a few hours). Happily, they had applied for a fiancee visa in Jan. 2012 in case she didn’t have a sponsoring employer by the time she wanted to be here or if they ran into problems with the H-1B. Had a wedding celebration this August where more of her family could attend.</p>
<p>My son’s future grad school funding depends on the outcome of several NSF grants currently in the review process…or they would be in the review process if the government didn’t shut down. Of course no guarantee that they would be funded, but they are (were) possible options.</p>
<p>Several of his grad student friends and professors in his department have been directly affected by the shutdown. Equipment that they signed up (quite a bit in advance) to have access to is now not available, with future dates often years later. It’s devastating, and actually has halted research in some cases.</p>
<p>The son of some dear friends is in grad school (STEM) and the folks (inc. some of his classmates) who have federal grants/funding did not get their stipends last week. He is also applying for a NSF grant, so that is also on hold.</p>
<p>I’d like to respond to the original question of how I have been impacted by the shutdown. I’m a furloughed federal worker and today at Costco I got confused about where someone was in line. I accidentally cut in front of him and he wasn’t very nice about it, nor did he seem interested in hearing my explanation. Well, I just totally fell apart which I attribute to being so on edge with the shutdown. I’d like to think I wouldn’t normally get so emotional.</p>
<p>Posters are right, we will probably be paid for this time. I can see why this seems like I’m getting a paid vacation and why people are short on sympathy. I don’t expect sympathy, I just want to be able to go back to work.</p>
<p>Pea. I totally agree. My hubby and I are both federal workers who were recently told to return to work. yay. BUT we’re not sure when we will get paid for the work being done. We were told that we would get paid through 30 Sep but not for 1-4 Oct until ‘they’ approve it. I told my supervisor that when I run out of money to buy gas, then I’ll be teleworking- which is something I would love to do more of but the people around here seem to think that line of sight supervision means one is more productive. argh.</p>
<p>I get frustrated by the people that think ALL federal workers are a bunch of fat cats that do little and make a lot of money. I know that in the past there were a lot of govt workers that sat around and got huge paychecks, but I could earn more if I worked as a contractor.</p>
<p>Plus, I DO work for my paycheck. I work hard. I support our Marines that are stationed around the world.</p>
<p>I hope all federal workers and contractors affected by the idiocy of this situation are able to go back to work soon.</p>
<p>Sending patience and calmness your way.</p>
<p>well, back to my insignificant hassle… it appears that our lender doing the refinancing accepted a letter from H’s doctor confirming his disability. I also sent the underwriter a printed page off the SSA website stating that they will not be providing Proof of Income letters.</p>
<p>I think we actually got past it and they haven’t come back demanding the impossible!</p>
<p>Just got notice from my school a number of government entities that were going to have tables during our career fair won’t be showing up next week.</p>
<p>S says his boss went around to be sure all the staff had liquidity. They are some assistance programs available. S reassured him he has enough cash for several months. His boss is a high ranking military guy, married to a practicing civilian md in private practice, so S figures they should be ok.</p>
<p>HImom, I read today that some people have been reclassified as essential due to events ( e.g., FEMA in LA and CDC) and therefore the gov’t had to reclassify others as non-essential to compensate. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but it would explain why your son has been reclassified.</p>
<p>Now is the time that recruiters are supposed to be coming to schools for internships next summer. They’re all cancelled if they have to do with any government agency (which is most of them as they’re funded by NIH and such). </p>
<p>The director of my program told us that it’s likely going to be harder for my cohort to get funding for our internships, both domestically and abroad, than any other cohort he’s supervised. Yippie.</p>
<p>One guy said yesterday on TV staight to the point. Of course, every single tax payer is affected. We still paying the same taxes, they were not lowered by 17% or so. However, 17% of government (receiving our taxes) decided to take a paid vacataion. Sorry, cannot call it shut down. When something is shutdown, people are not paid, more so, they loose their jobs. None of it is happenning. If some percetage of them decided to take vacation, then they should have lowered taxes by the same percentage to hold the contract between employer (taxpayers) and employee (the government). Try to tell your employer that you should be paid for additional vacation of your choice. Say you have normal 2 weeks. Then you decided to have another 3 weeks and demanded to be paid for these additional 3 weeks. If you are not out of the door at this point, then I call it a miracle.<br>
To say that you are not affected is not correct if you are a taxpayer. Then you can add from the pool of those who are not paying taxes but affected in some other way.</p>
<p>Those of us who have been furloughed did not “decide” to take a paid vacation. We have absolutely no power in this situation. For the most part, we took our jobs out of a desire to serve the American people, and we want to be allowed to just that.</p>