10/16/25
10/16/2025As I write this column on Sunday, October 12, the United States government is still shut down. Federal employee are not getting paid.
No, wait, that’s not quite true. MOST federal employees are not getting paid.
Who’s still receiving a paycheck?
That would be President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, members of Congress, and federal judges. The Constitution requires that they be paid no matter what. Their staffs – and those amount to many thousands – are continuing to work, but without receiving their salaries. They’ll be entitled to their back pay once the government reopens.
However, if their jobs are not considered “essential” as defined by the President, they could be furloughed. Some will receive back pay after the eventual reopening, and if Trump has his way, some will not.
The situation for other federal employees, estimated at more than 700,000, is mixed. Some are “essential” and are working, but without pay (except for military personnel, whom Trump has ordered the Defense Department to continue to pay). If you’re not considered essential, you are furloughed, with eventual reimbursement uncertain. And some, under Trump and Vance’s orders, are simply being fired.
Many thousands of people work for private companies with whom the government contracts for a wide variety of services. They are usually not reimbursed for their lost wages while the government is shut down. For instance, janitors who keep the Capitol shipshape work for private contractors, and they simply lose their pay without recourse. Some contractors choose to keep their employees – the lucky ones – on payroll even when the government is shut down.
Some members of Congress voluntarily refuse to take their salary while the shutdown continues, in solidarity with federal employees. All four Iowa members of the House of Representatives are doing just that. Some members of Congress donate their salary during the shutdown to a charity or other worthy cause.
To my knowledge, neither Iowa Senator – Chuck Grassley or Joni Ernst – has publicly announced that he or she will not accept a paycheck during the current shutdown. They did not decline or defer their salaries during the 2019 shutdown either.
Republican Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, has told members of that body that the House will not reconvene until the Senate agrees on a plan to reopen the government. The House passed a reopening bill in mid-September, but the Senate has been unable to agree on such a plan. Consequently Johnson shut the House down on September 19, about four weeks ago.
Senator Ernst in recent weeks has been particularly hard on federal employees who work remotely rather than coming into their offices. I haven’t heard her level the same criticism at House members who are doing the same thing.
In one sense, it doesn’t make much difference whether the House meets or not, except for an official vote to reopen the government after the Senate agrees on a plan. Congress convened for the 2025 session on January 3 of this year. That’s about 193 Monday-Friday working days ago, not counting official holidays. The House has been in session on only 111 of those days, about 58 percent of the time. That computes to an average of a three-day week ever since January 3.
But you can get a lot done in 111 days, right? Well, maybe not.
Since January 3, Congress has passed a grand total of 36 bills, and three of those were to rename certain federal installations in honor of someone. Thirty-six bills – that’s it.
On the other hand, Greene County Attorney Thomas Laehn, who officially announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate last Saturday at the State Historical Building in Des Moines, points out that during that same time period, President Trump has issued 209 executive orders, plus “presidential memoranda” and other executive actions to the same effect.
That’s how the federal government operates today. Congress has abdicated its duty to adopt legislation, turning its constitutional responsibility over to the President. Unlike Congress, he’s not reluctant to determine the rules by how the country is run.
It’s not what the Founders intended with the Constitution. Majority Republicans in Congress, as Laehn accurately states, are content to let Trump, in essence, make law, while they spend their time communicating with lobbyists, some individuals and groups, and contributors.
The same was true to some degree in the past with Democratic Presidents. But today Republican members of Congress take it to the extreme. Speaker Johnson has instructed his caucus to avoid town meetings in their home districts entirely because some citizens who attend those strongly criticize them. Few and far between are those like Senator Grassley, who continues to hold town meetings with voters in every one of Iowa’s 99 counties every year.
How much sense does it make for House members not to convene and still get paid on their regular schedule, while other federal personnel have to work but not get paid until later, and maybe never?
