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📄 A Letter to Congress from Servants of the Republic

📄 You Are Murdering Your Civil Service

​Federal workers, service members, and their families are being forced to absorb the cost of political gridlock. Air traffic controllers, active-duty military, cybersecurity and border security personnel, medical staff, educators, first responders, and other essential federal employees continue reporting for duty without receiving the pay they already earned. Their obligation to serve is being used against them, resulting in missed mortgage payments, mounting debt, damaged credit, delayed medical care, and impossible choices between food, medicine, and basic living expenses for families who keep this country running.

​If nothing changes, the damage will extend far beyond unpaid checks. Public safety weakens when essential jobs lose personnel, national security weakens when service strains retention, and public trust collapses when loyalty is met with financial harm. But if this practice ends, it protects families from economic shock, strengthens critical services, supports military readiness, and reaffirms a basic principle of fairness: those who serve the public must not be forced to subsidize the government with their own unpaid labor.

​This moment demands urgent action because each passing day deepens the financial crisis for those who have no power to opt out of showing up. Service members and federal workers swear an oath to the nation, not to political deadlock, and their pay should never be held hostage.

​Therefore, we call on all affected Service Members, Civil Servants, their Family Members, and the People of the United States to sign this petition. We demand that Congress act immediately to:

​Stop using military and federal pay as a political bargaining tool;
​Guarantee and authorize all back pay owed after shutdowns;
​Provide liquidated damages for financial harm caused by delayed pay, in the form of tax-free income or tax credits for wages that were delayed or unpaid during a government shutdown period; and
​Pass legislation ensuring pay is never again interrupted by a shutdown.

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SIGNED,

Service Members, Civil Servants, Their Families, and the People of the United States