The size of the pummeling brought by the government shutdown on Georgia congressional offices depends, like just about everything else around here, on their political affiliation.
Georgia Republican U.S. Senators Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss have gone from 30 staffers to five or six. Calls to Chambliss’ office get a recorded message from the senator: “Due to the government shutdown my office is performing only essential legislative operations with very minimal staff.”
Call Atlanta-area Democratic Reps. John Lewis, David Scott or Hank Johnson and you get a hello from a real-life staff member, all of whom were declared essential employees.
Nearly all of Georgia’s Democrats did not send their staffers home, while most Republicans are working with a minimal crew. By law, the only ones getting paid until the shutdown is over are the members of Congress, though some have vowed to give the paychecks to charity.
It could be construed as a political statement about big government, but no members are volunteering to slash their staffs. Republicans like to trumpet the unused slices of their member allotments they return to the federal Treasury and House cuts to member budgets, but this move won’t save taxpayer money in the likely event furloughed employees end up with back pay.
Gainesville Republican Rep. Doug Collins said his office furloughs are shared sacrifice as an estimated 800,000 federal employees were sent home last week.
“I just thought that was a disturbing idea,” he said of members who kept a full office.
The shutdown revealed the blurred lines between “essential” and “non-essential” or the new, more politically correct, “excepted” and “not excepted” federal employees. Each member of Congress was given the power to declare which of his or her employees must stay on the job.
U.S. House members’ official shutdown instructions say essential employees “entail or directly support Members’ performance of their constitutional responsibilities.” Shouldn’t they all be doing that?
“I believe every one of my staff is essential,” Johnson said. He added that constituent requests have only increased for his office as many federal services have been shut off.
Rep. Tom Graves, the Ranger Republican whose push to strip funding from the new health care law helped precipitate the shutdown, has gone from 17 staffers to six.
In his Northwest Georgia district, casework is piling up. In Washington, Graves is taking fewer meetings and not analyzing bills that fall under the legislative purview of furloughed aides.
There are exceptions to the partisan split. Augusta Democratic Rep. John Barrow is furloughing his entire staff on a rotating basis. And Roswell Republican Rep. Tom Price has not furloughed anyone, though spokesman Ryan Murphy said the office is not at full strength because of unfilled vacancies.
Collins’ bare-bones staffing led him last week to take on duties typically reserved for a lowly staff assistant: answering the phones.
He said he lets callers go through their sometimes harsh spiel before he reveals his identity.
“They find out it’s me and then we have a chance to just talk back and forth in very calm terms,” Collins said. “I had a lady the other day that said, ‘Oh, I apologize.’ And I said, ‘Hey, no, it’s OK.’ It’s an interesting conversation.”
