Furloughed employees return to work in Arkansas

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Furloughed federal and state employees headed back to work in Arkansas and across the country on Thursday after Congress reached a deal to end a 16-day partial government shutdown.

In North Little Rock, Simeon Yates said he was glad to return to his job as an auditor for the Arkansas National Guard.

"It's definitely a relief financially ... knowing that we'll be able to provide for our families again," said Yates, whose wife stays at home with their four young children.

Gov. Mike Beebe said Thursday that he has been as disgusted with Congress as he believes most Arkansans have been over the shutdown that began Oct. 1.

But Beebe, a Democrat, told reporters that the last-minute deal approved by the House and Senate and signed by President Barack Obama gives lawmakers a reprieve to address the deficit.

"Now's the time for them to sit down and act like adults and work on lowering the deficit, work on the serious decisions that need to be made, come together without the pressure of an ax falling on their head and do it now in a calm and rational manner and don't put the American people through this again," Beebe said.

Arkansas' four congressmen and two senators voted for the deal Wednesday night that re-opened the government and averted a default. But on Thursday, some of them were quick return to pointing fingers.

U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, the lone Democrat in Arkansas' congressional delegation, said called the shutdown wasteful and blamed it on a group of Republican House members.

"There's nothing about this that accomplished anything," Pryor said as he addressed a meeting of civil engineers on Thursday.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, who is challenging Pryor's re-election bid, blamed Senate Democrats for the shutdown.

"Senate Democrats have fought hard for more spending and to protect Obamacare at all costs," Cotton said in a news release. "They even voted to keep Congress's special Obamacare exemption rather than keeping the government open."

Amid the finger-pointing, some programs that rely on federal funding breathed a sigh of relief.

"It's good to know that the government has fulfilled its side of the bargain because we've been trying to fulfill our side," said Ben Goodwin, assistant director at Our House, a nonprofit group that provides homeless people in Little Rock with childcare, shelter and other assistance.

That group receives some federal funding, and the shutdown threatened to cut off childcare and potentially jeopardize the family housing for some of its clients, including Teshia James, who lives with her husband and four children at Our House.

James, who had a baby boy just this month, said the deal in Washington eased some of her worries, but she said she was still frustrated with the political gridlock.

"I kind of laughed to myself because it was unnecessary," James said. "And we'll have to worry about it again in January and February."

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Associated Press writer Andrew DeMillo contributed to this report.

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Follow Jeannie Nuss on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeannienuss . Follow Chuck Bartels on Twitter at http://twitter.com/cbartelsLIT .

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/furloughed-employees-return-arkansas-141438810.html
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