I think the telethon would be a fantastic idea, I'd even donate a few $$.

"lose their houses." Foreclosure and eviction takes many, many months, and the end result is the bank has a house they have to maintain until they can get rid of it. Banks have no interest in doing that. They will work with their customers to avoid foreclosure, and when they KNOW for a fact that the customers will get back pay--possibly double back pay--they are certainly going to be patient.

There are 800,000 federal employees not being paid. If their average take home pay was $500 per month (or $6000 a year) -- a wildly understated amount, this telethon would have to raise $100 million a week for every week of the shutdown. Plus, you'd have to figure out a way to handle the logistics of distributing the money.

This isn't a problem that can be fixed with a bake sale or telethon.

A telethon will not fix all the financial shortfalls but whatever is raised and made available is better then what they are getting from Trump - $0.

The point is, what counts is for Democrats to make every effort to provide what assistance they can which will be far greater than what the Rethugs are doing. It is about finding an organizational guru who can figure out a way to funnel the money to all the states. If you can get a reputable organization in each state to handle requests for that state then Federal workers could provide evidence of need to obtain a draw from that state's funds. They can figure out how to prioritize how the funds are disbursed, life saving medicine for example, I would think would be a high priority.

There are other ways for Democrats to provide assistance. For those Federal Employees who say they cannot afford to put gas in their vehicles to actually get to work, what about finding a local way to provide the required assistance. For example, creating a website where people can be matched up for carpooling for the duration, or car companies might offer to provide their transport vans (usually used for customers) to transport Federal Employees to and from work. They don't have to do it every day but different companies can trade off on different days. Different restaurants might pick a day to provide a certain amount of lunches for employees at a particular federal agency.

For people with child care issues because they cannot afford to pay for it, churches could come together to provide assistance during the crisis. Retired but able people could provide assistance in the churches.

There are ways for the people to come together to help Federal Employees. The point is that Democrats could use their District Offices to try to be the point guard for identifying the needs of the Federal Employees in their district and then work to find local solutions. I would think that any Democrat Rep or Senator who has their District Offices actively working to provide as much assistance as possible to their district that will show the voters that Democrats care, Rethugs don't.

I don't have all the answers but understand that if Democrats think and act outside of the box and every effort to provide actual assistance to their constituents they are both doing their job and showing that they care while Rethugs remain clueless as ever.

Jose Andres' is providing free meals to furloughed government workers on a daily basis. Hundreds, may be thousands of them. My office is adjacent to the restaurant space Andres' is using to hand out the free food and I've counted as many as 200 people in line at one time -- and it is a line that moves quickly. In addition, a vacant restaurant space nearby is now being used to give out other items, including sundries, dog food -- the things people need beyond a daily hot meal.

We're organizing fund raising events to support these efforts (as well as soliciting in-kind contributions). If you want to help, here's the website: https://www.worldcentralkitchen.org/chefsforfeds/

I know it pulls at all of our heart strings to know these people are suffering but if we do this we invite outside payments which coukd be used by the ultra rich and circumvent the appropriations process of the house.