Furloughs Might Actually Harm Me

The potential for government furloughs is one of the rare political stories that actually might have a direct impact on my life. I work with DoD employees, so if this furlough goes into effect, some or all of those people I work with will not be there one day a week.

It kind of sucks for them, but everyone I know is making enough money that a temporary loss of 20% of their income should not have much impact, unless they are living wildly beyond their means. In fact, I know more than one person who is actually looking forward to the time off.

For me as a contractor, until the end of April, it’s not anything to worry about. Our contract is already funded, and it won’t be a problem for contractors to cover that one day a week. (I may be exposing a dirty little secret here, but a substantial portion of your government does not work one day a week anyway, because a lot of them have this 5/4/9 schedule where they work 9 hours a day so they can take off every other Friday. So I would not recommend trying to ask your government for anything on a Friday.)

I said I won’t have to worry until the end of April. After that, our contract will require more funding. If we don’t get funding, then I guess I’ll be staying home without getting paid - not just one day a week but every day a week - until the funding comes in.

That would, in fact, suck. (Unless it was just for a couple of days, then it would be awesome.) To be fair, this funding scare comes up almost every year, and it always works itself out somehow. It’s just that this is the first time it’s come up during a sequestration scare.

Anyway I’m rather hoping this will be yet another case where after weeks of “omg the sky is falling we’re doomed” in the news, Congress will work something out at the last minute to keep their buddies in government employed.