this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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I've dealt with this a few times in my former career. Unfortunately, I was in the military and there's no quitting that job. You're signed up for a certain number of years and pretty much the only guaranteed way out of it early is to commit a crime and go to jail.
Fortunately, govt shutdowns weren't too bad for those of us who used USAA as their bank. Since they're a military-specific company, they know how our pay works and they know the federal govt is good for the money (eventually), so they'd deposit our regular paychecks in our account, even if we didn't actually get paid during the shutdown.
I had some coworkers without USAA who had to dig into savings to survive govt shutdowns, though.
Wait shit, I knew we didn’t pay federal employees who can leave during shutdowns but I was under the impression that the military at least kept operational budget including pay. Like that’s such a dick move. Especially since every shutdown has been from the party of “support our troops”.
The military itself has an annual budget that's approved every year. A govt shutdown doesn't cut off our access to that money; it's already been made available at the beginning of the fiscal year. A shutdown just prevents the govt from approving the next year's budget.
But the shutdown does affect service members' individual pay, since that's handed out twice a month (on the 1st and 15th). And it's not like we can just not work until we get paid. The way our contracts work, we're essentially on duty 24/7/365, for as many years as we signed up for (usually 4-6 at a time). We're authorized "regular leave" daily so we can go home, eat, sleep, and recharge for the next day. Because of that arrangement, we're always on call, expected to work whatever shift we're ordered to, and go wherever in the world the military needs us at a moment's notice. And it's impossible to work overtime if you're always on shift. Unless they enact "stop-loss," which prevents us from leaving the service when our contract expires. The Army did that for the Iraq War; a buddy of mine was stuck in the Army for 17 months past the end of his enlistment contract.
If there's anything I've learned in the 20 years I served, it's that Republican politicians use the "support our troops" line to win votes. But in reality, they don't give a shit about service members or veterans, and have regularly been voting to defund programs that actively help and support us. Democrats have done more to help military members, veterans, and their families, than Republicans. Trump himself didn't want anything to do with us unless it boosted his image with his constituents. I believe he called our MIA/KIA/POWs "losers." When I retired last year, almost every military member I worked with was voting Democrat. Fuck the Republican Party.