Right before the partial government shutdown over President Trump's border wall became the longest in U.S. history on Saturday, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassert found the bright side for the roughly 380,000 furloughed federal employees. "A huge share of government workers were going to take vacation days, say between Christmas and New Year's," he told PBS NewsHour's Paul Solman. "And then we have a shutdown and so they can't go to work, and so then they have the vacation but they don't have to use their vacation days." Because theses workers will eventually get their back pay, "in some sense they're better off," he added.
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