Furloughed federal workers in Oregon will keep unemployment cash, plus regular salary

I had a conversation with a few people at the onset of the federal government partial shutdown and let them know many federal employees would qualify for unemployment depending on the state. Some said I was wrong – and still won’t admit I was right – but now we learn the at least 1,300 employees who are getting back pay will be able to keep their unemployment checks too.

Isn’t this rich, with my emphasis.

Most federal employees who filed for unemployment compensation while they were furloughed are being asked to pay that money back, now that Congress and President Obama have agreed to pay all of those workers for their time off.

Beginning after Oct. 1, when the shutdown started, applications for unemployment compensation flowed in across the country. That included thousands in Maryland, the District and Virginia, which have a particularly high concentration of federal employees.

And despite the relatively short 16-day shutdown, at least some employees have already gotten unemployment money. …

Fox News reported that Oregon is letting workers keep their unemployment benefits, meaning they’d getting paid twice for time they never worked.

I could not find the Fox News story, but I found this over at KVAL.com. There are 27,000 federal employees in Oregon – who would have thought – and 4,400 of them applied for unemployment benefits. Of that number, 1,300 of them received a check from the state and state law says they can keep it, in effect double-dipping for a portion of the partial shutdown.

… Oregon state law mandates that the 1,300 Oregon federal employees who did receive unemployment benefits during the shutdown will not have to repay the money. …

The checks distributed totaled $680,000.

So that’s an average of $523.08 for each of them. Nice handout. So they got a free two week vacation, back pay, all of their benefits and more than $500 for their troubles.

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

4 Comments

  1. SeeingRed on October 21, 2013 at 9:12 am

    That’s like ‘asking’ the LA Walmart EBT shoppers to ‘pay back’ the Wally stores for the goods they walked out with.? Ain’t gonna happen.? Our Federal workers are as trustworthy as….



  2. Dimsdale on October 21, 2013 at 10:36 am

    Nothing like adding to their own stereotypes: the lazy, money grubbing government worker.?? There was a time when people would have been ashamed to be on the dole, even legitimately, but now, it’s “take the money and run”.
    ?
    Personally, I think they should recover it from the? back pay of the brown shirted NPS thugs that were threatening people at national parks and monuments.



  3. Gary J on October 21, 2013 at 7:20 pm

    I could have done that with one minor problem———-I would have been fired.



  4. bien-pensant on October 22, 2013 at 3:53 pm

    To further the stereotype: liberal democrats.
    ?
    But, hey, they are non-essential gubmint employees. The people who should be outraged more than we are, are the people who had to work while these double-dippers walk away with a bonus!
    ?
    And, the liberal democrats cry that conservatives and Republicans are evil.



square-government-sam-cash

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