As we approached the midnight deadline on September 30, it became clear that House and Senate Congressional Leaders were not going to pass a short-term continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government running beyond the start of the new fiscal year.

When alarm clocks rang the morning of October 1, around 800,000 federal employees that were deemed non-essential woke up to realize they did not have to go to work and would remain furloughed until Congress could work out its differences and pass a CR. Among those furloughed, were approximately 14 percent of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) workforce and 15 percent of the Department of Justice (DOJ) workforce.