Page 15 - Non Essential News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Jon: yeah. doesn't get and maybe doesn't care about until, you know, somebody isn't getting a check in the next week or so, you know, from the government. at the same time, the government is still collecting tax revenues, still can pay some of its bills if it chooses to, right? >> sure, yeah. there are, essentially 825,000 roughly civilian federal workers who would be furloughed in a shutdown. these are non-essential work is. they don't like to be called non-essential but technically that is what they are listed as. the essential workers would still be functioning. you still get social securit...

Plans as many as 800,000 federal workers would have to stay home without pay and officials say they can't volunteer to work, that would be against the law. >> if we were to shut down at 12:01 on saturday morning, those that are furloughed need to power down their blackberries and not do any work and those who are working cannot reach out to those employees for work purposes. >> pete williams is nbc's justice correspondent. that was kind of an amusing moment inside the briefing room. we said why can't they just volunteer? but it's against the law. >> this is kind of nuts, isn't it? but there is...

>> it wasn't blackberries. we had to worry about our pagers and big brick motorola phones in those days. people forget there were two shutdowns, in '95 and then in '96. we went through it twice. there was actually competition to be -- whether you were you w essential or non-essential employee. but it was trying to get to the right numbers and then eventually in the second shutdown it was to get to the right scoring so that we can get to an agreement and get the shutdown lifted. >> you know, the $3 billion or so question is who gets the blame if the government shuts down. it does not look very ...

Personnel. so this is really going to be telling them. these letters say if there is not a spending bill passed, a fiscal year 2011 spending bill passed, then either you stay or you go. >> just to be clear, these notices that are going out, do they spell out whether or not these staffers are essential or non-essential, their jobs? >> they do. they do. there's two kinds of letters. if you are considered essential personnel, then gs it it is goi tell you that you are furlough exempt. if you're considered nonessential, then it will tell you in the case of a government shutdown that you will be fu...

On this this morning? >> they have been very cautious with their public statements. and not pressing the libyan government too hard. and you have to wonder if that has to do in part with the fact that u.s. officials here want to make sure they get as many as those few thousand americans out of libya if possible before they start pressing the libyans much more. there's going to be a ferry leaving in the next few hours from tripoli. u.s. officials have put out the word there on the ground that americans living there, including some at the u.s. embassy who have been deemed non-essential to keepin...