Nearly two weeks after the end of the longest government shutdown in U.S history, many federal workers still have not received their back pay or have only gotten a fraction of what they are owed as government agencies struggle with payroll glitches and other delays.
And even as they scramble to catch up on unpaid bills and to repay unemployment benefits, the prospect of another shutdown looms next week.
“President Trump stood in the Rose Garden at the end of the shutdown and said, ‘We will make sure that you guys are paid immediately.’ … And here it is, it’s almost two weeks later,” said Michael Walter, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture food safety inspection service in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and only got his paycheck Wednesday. He said two co-workers told him they still had received nothing.
The government has been short on details about how many people are still waiting to be paid.
Bradley Bishop, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, said the Trump administration had taken “unprecedented steps to ensure federal employees impacted by the shutdown received back pay within a week.”
CUCUTA, Colombia — For Anahis Alvarado, whose battle with kidney failure has become more desperate as Venezuela sinks deeper into crisis, the prospect of bringing in emergency medical and food supplies can’t come soon enough.
She’s watched five fellow patients in her dialysis group die over the past few years due to inadequate care. Only a quarter of the dialysis machines where she receives treatment at a government-run clinic in Caracas still work.
And last week she had to spend almost a third of her family’s monthly income buying basic supplies like surgical gloves and syringes that President Nicolas Maduro’s bankrupt government is no longer able to provide.
“We’re losing time,” the 32-year-old Alvorado said.
She hopes relief will soon be on its way.
CUCUTA, Colombia — The Venezuelan military has barricaded a bridge at a key border crossing, issuing a challenge on Wednesday to a U.S.-backed effort by the opposition to bring humanitarian aid into the troubled nation.
The Tienditas International Bridge was blocked a day prior by the Venezuelan National Guard with a giant orange tanker, two large blue containers and makeshift fencing near the border town of Cucuta, Colombian officials said.
The bridge is at the same site where officials plan to store humanitarian aid that opposition leader Juan Guaido is vowing to deliver to Venezuela. The Trump administration has pledged $20 million in aid and Canada has promised another $53 million.
The squabble is now the latest front in the battle between Guaido and President Nicolas Maduro, who is vowing not to let the supplies enter the country. Maduro argues Venezuela isn’t a nation of “beggars” and has long rejected receiving humanitarian assistance, equating it to a foreign intervention.
Looking up at the giant containers blocking the bridge Wednesday, aid worker Alba Pereira shook her head and dismissed the barricade as another government ploy. She said that humanitarian volunteers would find a way to get the aid into the country regardless.
NEW YORK — The nation’s federal financial watchdog said Wednesday that it plans to abolish most of its critical consumer protections governing payday lenders.
The move is a major win for the payday lending industry, which argued the government’s regulations could kill off a large chunk of its business. It’s also a big loss for consumer groups, who say payday lenders exploit the poor and disadvantaged with loans that have annual interest rates as much as 400 percent.
The cornerstone of the regulations was a requirement that lenders make sure borrowers could afford to repay a payday loan without being stuck in a cycle of debt, a standard known as “ability to repay.” This standard would be eliminated under the new rules. Another part of the rules, which would have limited the number of payday loans a person could roll over, was also eliminated.
Critics of the payday lending industry have argued that without these underwriting standards, the CFPB’s new regulations are effectively toothless. The main criticism of the payday lending industry was that many borrowers would take months to repay a loan that was originally designed only to last a couple of weeks, renewing the loan over and over again.
“This proposal is not a tweak to the existing rule … it’s a complete dismantling of the consumer protections (the bureau) finalized in 2017,” said Alex Horowitz, a researcher with Pew Charitable Trusts, a think tank whose research on the industry was relied on heavily by the bureau when the original rules were unveiled a year and a half ago.
SAN FRANCISCO — A gas explosion in a San Francisco neighborhood shot flames high into the air Wednesday and was burning four buildings as utility crews scrambled to shut off the flow of gas.
Construction workers cut a natural gas line, San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said. Authorities initially said five of them were missing, but the entire construction crew was found safe, and no other injuries were reported.
Hayes-White said several buildings in the area were evacuated, including a medical clinic and several apartment buildings.
“It’s pretty dramatic, but we have pretty good handle on it,” she said.
Firefighters worked to keep the fire from spreading while Pacific Gas & Electric crews have been trying for more than an hour to shut off the natural gas line.
From Associated Press