Wisconsin’s congressional delegates introduced legislation to pay federal employees furloughed without pay during the shutdown and to prevent future shutdowns.
Of 29,000 federal workers in Wisconsin, 426 applied for unemployment benefits during the shutdown.
Before the shutdown ended, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, introduced a bill called the Shutdown Fairness Act that would authorize affected federal agencies to pay federal workers during negotiations. The bill set a Jan. 1, 2020, deadline for the authorization unless the agency gets funding through a spending agreement first.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, also co-sponsored a bill to secure back pay for low-wage federal contractors impacted by the federal shutdown.
On the day the government re-opened, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Glenbeulah, introduced a bill he co-authored with U.S. Rep. David Loebsack (D-Iowa) that would essentially block future shutdowns from being used as leverage during policy disputes.
The bills are still in the early stages of the legislative process.