The Pentagon is ordering most of its approximately 400,000 furloughed civilian employees back to work amid a partial shutdown of the U.S. government
Saturday's decision by Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel is based on a Pentagon legal interpretation of a law called the Pay Our Military Act. That measure was passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama shortly before the partial government shutdown began Tuesday.
The Pentagon did not immediately say exactly how many workers will return to work. The Defence Department said "most" were being brought back.
Also on Saturday, the House passed a bill to give 800,000 furloughed federal workers retroactive pay once the government reopens, in a rare weekend session. The vote was 407-0.
- Read the CBC's Neil Macdonald on the Republican's civil war
- Interactive: U.S. government shutdown - what's open, what's closed
The Senate was expected to OK it as well, but the timing is unclear. The White House backs the legislation.
Both President Barack Obama and Congress are in Washington on Saturday, but there's no apparent progress in ending the shutdown
After the voting, House members are planning to leave town and not return until Monday evening. The House has passed several bills to reopen selected parts of the federal government.
Democrats are rejecting the piecemeal approach, saying the entire government should be reopened. White House officials have said the House should reopen the entire government and not pick agencies and programs over others.
In the 1995-96 government shutdowns, furloughed workers were retroactively given full pay.
No sign of shutdown ending
Despite the White House's declared appreciation of the essential the role of federal workers, there appeared no sign of a breakthrough in getting them back to work.
'The far right of the Republican Party won't let Speaker John Boehner give that bill a yes-or-no vote.Take that vote. Stop this farce. End this shutdown now.'- Barack Obama in his weekly radio address
Lawmakers keep replaying the same script on Capitol Hill: House Republicans pass piecemeal bills to reopen popular and politically sensitive programs — on Friday, disaster relief and food aid for the poor — while Democrats insist that the House vote on a straightforward Senate-passed measure to reopen all of government.
"But the far right of the Republican Party won't let Speaker John Boehner give that bill a yes-or-no vote," Obama said in his Saturday radio and Internet address. "Take that vote. Stop this farce. End this shutdown now."
There seemed little chance of that.
For one thing, flinching by either side on the shutdown might be seen as weakening one's hand in an even more important fight looming just over the horizon as the combatants in Washington increasingly shifted their focus to a mid-month deadline for averting a first-ever default.
"This isn't some damn game," Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said as the White House and Democrats held to their position of agreeing to negotiate only after the government is reopened and the $16.7 trillion debt limit raised.
Republicans pointed to a quote in The Wall Street Journal from an anonymous White House official that "we are winning ... It doesn't really matter to us" how long the shutdown lasts.
Concessions on health care sought
At issue in the shutdown is a temporary funding measure to keep the government fully open through mid-November or mid-December.
More than 100 stopgap continuing resolutions have passed without much difficulty since the last shutdown in 1996. But tea party Republicans, their urgency intensified by the roll-out of health insurance marketplaces this month, are demanding concessions in Obama's health care law as their price for the funding legislation, sparking the shutdown impasse with Democrats.
Obama has said he won't negotiate on the temporary spending bill or upcoming debt limit measure, arguing they should be sent to him free of Republican add-ons. Congress, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, routinely sent Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, "clean" stopgap spending bills and debt-limit increases.
House Republicans appeared to be shifting their demands, de-emphasizing their previous insistence on defunding the health care overhaul in exchange for re-opening the government. Instead, they ramped up calls for cuts in federal benefit programs and future deficits, items that Boehner has said repeatedly will be part of any talks on debt limit legislation.
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