(Washington Examiner) — Federal employees in the Washington region say their biggest fear as the threat of a government shutdown looms is that they and their families ultimately will be forced to pay for Congress’ impasse. Longtime employees who experienced the 1995 shutdown that lasted 26 days — much of it during the holiday season — said this one scares them more because their household budgets are already tight. And on top of that, the government budget has been tight and likely will be getting tighter. ”We don’t know anything — we don’t know if we’ll get paid, we don’t know if we’ll keep our homes,” said a 20-year employee for U.S. Customs and Border Protection who declined to give his name. The three-week budget extension passed in March is set to expire Friday. Many of the region’s 150,000 federal employees believe they won’t be paid their salaries retroactively as they were in 1995 because of the political pressure to slash the government budget. Many employees interviewed Tuesday said they could weather a few days or a week on an unpaid furlough. But most said missing more than a couple weeks’ pay would be a huge financial setback as they try to pay their bills.
