Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., holds a town hall at the Warrenton Community Center on March 20, 2025 in Warrenton, Va. Subramanyam has reintroduced a bill to help blue the financial impacts of a government shutdown on federal employees and contractors. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Revived bill aims to ease financial strain on federal employees during shutdown
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., has reintroduced legislation by former Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-Va., that would require regulators to issue new guidance to help prevent financial hardship for federal employees and contractors caused by budget impasse.
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., has brought back a bill from the last government shutdown designed to help protect federal employees and contractors from adverse financial impacts from the current budget impasse.
Subramanyam’s Shutdown Guidance for Financial Institutions Act (H.R. 5689) calls for regulators to issue guidance to financial institutions no later than 24 hours after the start of a government shutdown, advising them that people and businesses may face hardships in covering expenses or accessing credit through no fault of their own.
The legislation also calls for the guidance to request that financial institutions modify loan terms and extend new credit lines to those affected by the shutdown, as well as preventing adverse financial information that would harm people and businesses from being reported.
“Our constituents should not pay the price for Washington's dysfunction, and these bills offer financial relief to the federal workers and contractors who will be hurt the most by the Republican shutdown,” said Subramanyam in a statement.
The legislation has its roots in the previous government shutdown and Subramanyam’s predecessor, former Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-Va.
Wexton sponsored the first version of the bill in May 2019 in the wake of the 35-day partial shutdown after regulators didn’t issue guidance until 20 days in.
That bill did pass the House by a voice vote in September 2019, before stalling in the Senate. Wexton stepped down from the House in January after being diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy.
Subramanyam’s new version of the legislation is among a slate of bills introduced in the lead-up to the current shutdown, as well as its ongoing disruption. The congressman also joined, as co-sponsor, the House version of a bill to allow federal workers to take out loans against their Thrift Savings Plan savings without penalty during a government shutdown lasting at least two weeks.
The Senate again rejected a continuing resolution on Monday that would fund the federal government through Nov. 21 as the shutdown approaches the end of its first week.