WASHINGTON — They have no shame.
Members of Congress have been spotted enjoying the good life in casinos, at Disney World, and on overseas jaunts during their two-week, so-called “work from district” time, while thousands of Department of Homeland Security workers have been left unpaid.
Both the House and Senate adjourned last week despite talks to end the longest shutdown in US history collapsing, giving scores of federal workers little hope of getting compensated for their work anytime soon.
“Congress needs to come back,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday. “Democrats need to fund the Department of Homeland Security.”
On Sunday, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the powerful House Oversight Committee, was spotted at a casino bar in Fontainebleau Las Vegas in photos released by TMZ.
Garcia noted that his father has lived in Sin City for 15 years and attempted to shift the blame to GOP leadership for the shutdown.
“I try to see him whenever I can,” Garcia said of his father. “And like I said a few days ago, Speaker Mike Johnson should have never sent us all home.”
Lawmakers in the House and Senate get paid a minimum of $174,000 a year, depending on their role. Their constitutionally protected paychecks come through regardless of whether the government shuts down due to a congressional deadlock.
Over the weekend, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) posted a picture of himself posing next to late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel in Los Angeles — far away from his home state — while participating in a “No Kings” rally.
The Post contacted Murphy’s office for an explanation about why he was so far from Connecticut.
A myriad of Democrats in Congress, such as Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) and others, were seen at “No Kings” protests over the weekend, often posting photos of themselves at the rallies.
Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) was seen enjoying his grandson’s baseball game back in Georgia.
Since Congress adjourned, a delegation of four senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee touched down in Taipei for discussions about the US relations with Taiwan.
Additionally, just hours after the Senate adjourned, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was spotted at Disney World with a bubble wand. Graham claims he was there to visit friends after lunch with special envoy Steve Witkoff and others, “about the possibility of normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.”
“I voted 7 times to fully fund the government,” Graham said in a statement. “Call a Democrat.”
Graham has numerous events planned in South Carolina this week.
Right now, there are no plans for either chamber of Congress to gavel back into session early. On Monday, the GOP didn’t attempt to wrangle any DHS funding bill through the Senate’s pro forma session.
The Senate had passed a bill to fund all of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection, in the wee Friday morning hours.
The House rejected that, and instead, passed a 60-day stopgap measure to keep all of DHS open through May 22.
President Trump took executive action last Friday to pay Transportation Security Administration workers, who last had a full paycheck on Feb. 14 when the funding lapse began.
The retroactive paychecks for TSA employees went out Monday to a majority of its workforce, according to a DHS spokesperson. Over 500 TSA workers have left the agency since the shutdown began.
But despite Trump’s executive order, thousands of federal workers in other DHS agencies still remain without paychecks, including support staff for ICE, CBP, Coast Guard, and more.
The current lapse has broken the prior 43-day record for a government shutdown that Congress set in the fall of last year.
“This is caused by Democrat terrorists. These people are sick,” Trump grumbled to reporters about Air Force One on Sunday.
“They don’t care about our country, they don’t care about people. But what it’s all about really is they want to have open borders, and they want to have criminals come into our country.”
