The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 1.18 Talking With Victims Of This Disastrous, Painful, & Chaotic Government Shutdown...

Episode Date: January 18, 2019

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Sup you beautiful bastards, hope you're having a fantastic Friday. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. And if you're new here, on Fridays I try to do something a little bit different. And in fact today, it's even different from our normal kind of different. You know, whenever we talk about these massive stories that affect hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of people, it is very easy to lose the human beings in that story. Because the number of people is so inconceivable to your everyday life that they just become statistic. But it's so incredibly important for us

to not lose the personal human level of these stories because that's why these stories matter. And so that's why today, along with my dumb face talking to you about the news like normal, you're gonna be hearing from some of the actual human beings being affected by the federal government shutdown happening in the US right now. And if for some reason you aren't familiar

with the situation, you didn't see our coverage earlier this week, you haven't looked at the news in general, here's a quick TLDR. Today marks the 28th day of the partial federal government shutdown, which of course makes this a historic shutdown. It is the longest shutdown in U.S. history. And this means that 800,000 federal government employees have been going without pay, and some, like the TSA, the Coast Guard, just to name a few, even working without pay since the shutdown began. But also on the note about government pay, on Wednesday, Trump signed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, which is a good thing moving forward once the shutdown is over, but as far as what happens now, it does not help.

Essentially, it just means that the workers will be paid once the shutdown is over, which is, of course, the problem here. I think that's something that stands out because I think most Americans understand what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck. And I say that because according to research from CareerBuilder that was published in August of 2017, 78% of US workers live paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet. And to make it worse,

it's not just people trying to not dig themselves into a hole, it's people that are already in a hole. They found that nearly three in four workers say that they're in debt today with more than half thinking that they will always be. And so with no resolution in sight as of recording this video, looking at all the reports, the statistics around the problem at hand, we really wanted to talk to the people the government shutdown was directly affecting in terms of missed paychecks, financial burdens. So we decided to reach out to a handful

of government employees and hear their stories. And so to do that with me, I had the fantastic Danny Rosenberg from my team just jump into it. The government is partially shutting down because Congress has failed to pass the straightforward legislation necessary to keep the government running

without imposing sharp hikes in Medicare premiums and deep cuts in education and the environment. Unfortunately, Congress has not fulfilled its responsibility. It's failed to pass a budget. And as a result, much of our government must now shut down until Congress funds it again. I'm very proud of doing what I'm doing. I don't call it a shutdown. I call it doing what you have to do for the benefit and for the safety of our country.

On December 22, 2018, the government shut down after failure to negotiate funding for the border wall. On January 12, 2019, it became the longest-running shutdown in American history. I saw a woman, a federal contractor furloughed, on CNN, who started a GoFundMe page to help cover her bills. A federal prison guard on Vice, vulnerable, crying, talking about having to drive Uber to pay his bills. The government is closed and our civil servants are hurting. I reached out to Randy Irwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, to learn more about how these shutdowns affect government workers. I'm Randy Irwin. I'm the national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. We're America's first federal employee union. We represent about 110,000 federal workers across the country at 35 different federal

agencies and departments. You know, 800,000 people across the country have had their lives completely upended because of the shutdown. Their pay has been cut off. These are middle-class, hardworking Americans that have had the carpet pulled out from under them during the holidays, no less, without any warning. So, I mean, this is kind of disastrous for these people. In basically every instance, it has come to, in the past, it has come to a resolution before things got really serious. And what we're seeing is people are, they're going to be missing rent. They're going to have checks bounce. They're not going to be able to fill prescriptions. They're concerned about healthcare for their children and their loved ones and their parents and everything else. They're not allowed to take leave when they're essential employees. So they're forced into an unpaid leave status,

which, hey, federal employees, you work, you accrue some kind of bank of annual leave and sick leave. And if you're sick, you put in for sick leave and you're not going to be missing pay. Well, for these essential employees that are working, they're furloughed if they're not able to go to work because they're sick. And that's a pretty egregious thing. I mean, like losing pay is losing pay. And the truth is they've earned it. They've earned their banks of

leave and should be able to use them. And they're in a predicament where they can't. And I'm sure we have people with 800,000 people across the country affected. It's a virtual certainty that there's people going to work sick because they can't afford to miss paycheck. People don't realize that federal employees are everywhere throughout the United States. 85% of federal employees nationwide are outside of the D.C DC area. They're in every community across the country doing incredibly important work for the American people, maintaining our defense, maintaining our homeland security, maintaining our national forests.

Let's get some sober minds together, get in a room and hash out your differences. This isn't a big major fight over hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, which is what it should take because of the pain that it costs to resolve these differences. I wanted to talk to some of these people myself, a real interaction. I sent a call out for anyone who wanted to share their stories, and I got four very different people. Hi, my name is Melissa. In a family, a government federal family, we work for the Department of Justice for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

And we're currently in El Paso, Texas. I'm Rebecca. I'm from Florida. My dad has worked for the federal government for about 20 years now. And we've been impacted by the government shutdowns. My name is Adam. I work for the U.S. Attorney's Office, Department of Justice. I'm an IT specialist. My name is Megan. I work at the International Trade Commission. I'm a lawyer. Not yet. We're down to the last. I think my account has $92 in it right now. The last paycheck was short because the government shutdown began before the pay period ended. My mortgage. You know, I have no children,

so I'm actually end up being pretty lucky in terms of like what I can and can't afford. You know, it's easy for me to decide that I'm just not going to have dinner every day this week. You know, it's not the same if you have kids. I had to take out a TSP loan about five years ago. I'm almost done paying it off, but I kind of forgot that that comes out of my paycheck. So I actually got an email from TSP today saying, oh, well, we know you're going to miss a payment. And I was like, oh, heck, I sure am. Both the mortgage company and the credit card company said that there was nothing they could do for this month's bill. They flat out told us no for the mortgage. And for the credit card, they said that if it

continued, they might be able to work with us if we can get all the supporting documents. For our loan, they said we have a 15 day grace period and that should be good enough. That's basically what we were told. For that shutdown in 2013, they were giving us updates two and three days before it was happening. We were getting breakdowns of what we had to do. We were given emails with like, I mean, I can't even, the difference is night and day.

I mean, it just doesn't seem like anybody cares. We went through the one in 2013, but that one didn't affect our pay periods too much. If I recall correctly, it kind of happened in between. So pay might have been delayed, but not gone completely. Right now we're risking it not being there completely, and we're already more than two weeks in, so I've depleted everything we had.

My first shutdown was 2013. That was another long one, although now we've beat that one. And I remember trying to come out the other side of that. It was a challenge. And I wasn't supervisor back then, but even just managing my own caseload, it was difficult trying to catch back up. And the last shutdown, if I recall, was over funding for, it was over Obamacare, I do believe. Again, very strong feelings on both sides, but I never felt that. I always felt that both sides were trying to get what they wanted, but trying to get to the answer quickly. I don't feel that

now. Because of the shutdown, a lot of the things my senior year that everyone else gets super excited about, I missed out. I missed prom. I missed like the senior trip. And I didn't feel right asking my parents to go to those things because I didn't want to put even more of a burden onto them. Honestly, I feel like they probably can't understand a lot of it. The little things that you don't even think about in your day-to-day life, how to provide your school lunches for your kids, the little things like that, even things like toilet paper, you know, stuff like that. I mean, you can't just go to the store and buy it when you're out. You have to stop and think, okay, well, if I run out of what I have, what do I do?

What do I do if there's an emergency? What do I do if my son has an asthma attack and a hospital won't take me because my insurance isn't active anymore? Or because I can't offer any payment up front? I just don't know how to cope with these things, and I don't think a lot of people understand. And when you have people on TV saying, well, your landlord will understand the circumstances or get a second job, it's not easy when you're already working a job. When you're working full-time because you're an essential employee and your spouse is working too or going to school and you have kids to take care of, it's not something you can just go do.

It's frustration. I would hope that that's clear. I mean, I think anyone or most people can remember what it was like when you were looking for a job or, you know, before you got a job or if you were between jobs and the uncertainty. And if you can just imagine the uncertainty of having a job, having what is supposed to be the most stable job in the country, being a civil servant, and you just don't even know when you're going to be able to get your next paycheck or get back to work. There's just this feeling of hopelessness in the office and of resignation. People feel like they're responsible for this somehow, you know, like as if maybe they should just have a different job if they can't deal with it, which I don't understand. I mean, the reason why I'm there is because of the job security.

It's supposed to be a secure job. I mean, we live in this society where they've demonized labor unions for 50 years. So everybody has to be a contractor or a freelancer. That's all we get to be. We're not allowed to have health care or pension. And I mean, you know, this is getting worse and worse, right? The last time they had one before 2013 was in the mid nineties. And now they're happening every five months. And I'm only just starting. I mean, I've only been there 10 years. I mean, who knows what it's going to be

like 20 years from now? I can't even imagine. Like you may think that like, oh, they work for the government. Like they're fine. They have all this security just in general. But things like this, it truly does affect everyone. It affects not only the workers, but their children, their family. It is a whole process to get them back like afloat again. And people may seem like, oh, it's only a couple of days, like it's not that big of a deal. But no, like a lot of people still have to go to work. They still have to leave their families, although they're not getting paid for it at the time. So they're going in for free work. And it's just, it's not fun. These are life altering things.

If my credit gets ruined because I can't pay my mortgage on time or, you know, I start defaulting on bills. It's a big deal because I've worked hard to get to where I'm at. I've worked hard to build up my credit to what it is. I've never ever in my life defaulted on a bill once. And this is about to go all down the drain in a few days here. Truck month is on at Chevrolet. Get 0% financing for up to 72 months on a 2025 Silverado 1500 Custom Blackout or Custom Trail Boss. With Custom Trail Bosses available, class exclusive Duramax three liter diesel engine and that 71 off-road package with a two inch factory suspension lift. You get both on-road confidence and off-road capability dirt road ahead.

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Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. I personally deal with a statute that investigates unfair imports, typically goods that come across the border that infringe intellectual property or trade secrets or some other means of unfair competition. Could be antitrust, could be a number of things. We issue two customs that keep these products out. So while we're shut down, people whose intellectual property may be getting violated and there's goods coming into the border that we can't complete our work.

So they're being economically harmed. So not just the fact that, you know, my calendar is backed up, but what we do is real work. And so that's not getting done. Yeah, I'm a cancer survivor. The cancer that I had was thyroid, so it required me to have my thyroid gland removed. The thyroid kind of controls everything in your body, so I need the hormones to survive. So I have to take the hormone daily. It's not something I can go without for very long. And my son has asthma. I have asthma. I have a few autoimmune diseases. They require regular medications and care. Even my cancer follow-up required me to have expensive screenings.

And we get our health insurance through the Federal Bureau of Prisons. And because of that, I'm not sure how long we'll have insurance because we've been told that after 30 days, we go into basically standby mode for nonpayment. So it gets suspended. And at that time, I won't be able to do anything because I won't have insurance if that is in fact how it will work out. But even right now, having insurance, I simply don't have the money to even go to a doctor's appointment

to renew prescriptions or to pick up prescriptions. I just don't have it. It's just not there. I mean, there's really not much to say. It's a cultural problem, you know, down to its very core. We just don't treat people who are civil servants with the respect that they deserve. I mean, it's not that I need to have respect. I don't care about that so much, but it would be nice to get the paycheck that I'm supposed to get. They had the shutdown in the 90s and Congress made damn sure that they were going

to get paid. They passed legislation to make sure that they separated their paychecks from the rest of the federal government. And the Nancy Pelosi's and Mitch McConnell's of the universe don't even need the paycheck that they're getting from this. One year in Congress or Senate and they get a pension for life. Where does that make sense? I got to invest 20 years and then I won't even get my pension until 62. I just, sorry. I have noticed my parents have been extremely stressed out. They've almost

lost their house a couple of times just because payments would get low. My dad was the only income at the time. You know, some things are going on and, you know, we are being forced to work without pay. And then other things that we really need to work on just are not happening. We deal with some fairly big technology and some fairly big companies, millions of dollars of things at stake. So it's a problem. We are very busy and actually we're at a high right now in terms of our caseload. So just trying to deal with what we already had was daunting And now everything is going to get pushed back. It's going to be a real mess. It's amazing what like just two weeks can do. And it just completely shook my parents' world. And it was very hard to get back up on their feet. Like it took a long time for them to finally feel stable again. So even though they are eventually backpaid,

it creates a domino effect because you had to defer and make payment plans with the mortgage. And then you have to defer and make payment plans for your phone plan and then the electric and then the water. And that just continues to pile on. And then sometimes these payment plans require you to pay two or three payments at once. And then it's about making choices like, OK, what's more important this time, the mortgage or the water or the electricity or the phone? So what happens now that we're in unprecedented territory? Your local law enforcement are employed through the state. So, no, the cops won't be off duty anytime soon. The IRS will still accept tax returns and issue refunds starting January 28th

and will be bringing back on some furloughed workers for tax season. The SNAP program, also known as food stamps, is funded through February. Health insurance. Contract workers furloughed get their insurance independently, which means a lack of income will make paying their monthly premiums stressful. For federal employees, the premiums usually taken directly out of their paychecks will start getting billed directly to them after two to three pay periods, which will also be hard to pay without, well, pay.

What rings through my ears when I think about Melissa, Megan, Rebecca, Adam, and hundreds of thousands of other federal workers and contractors in this is something Randy said. It's going to get very serious quickly. So in the past, you know, we've reached a resolution when it's gotten to this point. They may have missed a paycheck, but they never got to miss a second paycheck. If we start missing two and three paychecks, we're going to be in unprecedented territory and you're going to see pain in a way that we've never seen during a government shutdown before.