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5 days agoFederal employees are explicitly guaranteed their back pay.
Part of the problem behind the scenes is that the Democrats do not really trust guarantees passed into law anyone, as Trump has been utilizing the recision process to simply not pay money that Congress has explicitly appropriated into law.
The GOP has 53 senators. Under current Senate procedural rules, they need 60 votes to pass a budget.
Having said that, they only need 50 votes to change Senate procedural rules. However, for reasons I do not comprehend, Senators from both bodies have been surprisingly resistant to the idea of removing or adding exemptions to the 60 vote requirement.