Last week, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) introduced the Emergency Relief for Federal Contractors Act to allow federal contractors working without pay to withdraw pay from their retirement savings without penalty.
Cortez Masto’s district includes the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Nevada National Security Site, the largest NNSA site that conducts underground, subcritical experiments to evaluate the health of the nuclear stockpile.
“Federal contractors should not have to worry about keeping food on the table during a government shutdown, and many can’t simply weather an unknown period of time with no income and no promise of backpay,” Cortez Masto said in an Oct. 1 statement on her website. “This commonsense legislation gives federal contractors a break by allowing them to use the savings that they’ve earned without being penalized.”
According to her statement, a government shutdown “disrupts” $14.5 billion per week in federal contracts, and federal contractors do not receive automatic backpay for work the way federal workers do. Cortez Masto is one of only a couple of Senate Democrats to split with the party majority and vote with Republicans last week in favor of a continuing resolution to keep the government open.
Cortez Masto also cosponsored legislation with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) that would allow federal employees to withdraw from their Thrift Saving Plan, a different retirement account, also without penalty.
Thursday Oct. 9 and Friday Oct. 10 was Days 9 and 10 of the government shutdown. Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (S.D.), claim Democrats refuse to vote for the “clean, nonpartisan C.R. [continuing resolution], sitting right here at the Senate desk.” Meanwhile Democrats, like Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), say that Republican leaders “refuse to negotiate” and “need to sit down with Democrats and have a serious negotiation to fix health care and reopen the government at once.”