Dear Friend,

Last year’s holiday season saw hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed or working without pay as part of the longest government shutdown in history. So I’m pleased, a year later, to finally have some good news to share with federal workers in Virginia:

• No government shutdown. On a bipartisan basis, Congress voted to keep the government open for business through the end of the fiscal year. We’ve still got to end the threat of government shutdowns once and for all by passing my Stop STUPIDITY Act.
• Federal workers will now be eligible for 12 weeks paid parental leave, thanks to a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that Congress passed this week. Until now, new parents have had to tap into sick leave, vacation time, and unpaid leave in order to care for a child. This provision builds on language I was able to secure in the Intelligence Authorization Act providing 12 weeks of paid leave to new parents in the intelligence community.
• A 3.1 percent pay raise for federal civilian employees. Congress once again chose to override President Trump’s request for a punitive, across-the-board pay freeze for the federal workforce, and included a raise as part of the bipartisan spending package that passed this week.

Roughly 2 million civilian employees work for the federal government. They are men and women of every racial background and from every state in the country. Yet there is one thing they all have in common: They made a choice to serve, even knowing, in many cases, that they could be making more money elsewhere. We should do right by them, today and every day of the year.

If you want to share your thoughts about an issue that’s important to you, you can send me an email any time using the form on my Senate website. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,