Jimmy Kimmel vows to give federal workers jobs on his show until the US government shutdown ends

It is now day 18 of the US government shutdown over the dispute of the funding for Donald Trump's controversial border wall with Mexico.

There is no end in sight over the issue, with Trump now expected to declare a national emergency in order to bypass congress and implement the construction of the wall without approval.

While this is a huge issue, another area of the shutdown which has prompted a lot of headlines is that around 800,000 federal employees are being unpaid for this entire period.

This affects everything from homeland security to agriculture and the treasury to transportation, and there is no indication whether they will be paid the money they are owed from the shutdown.

This problem was acknowledged on the most recent episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live,where the host attempted to offer a small solution to workers going without pay for more than two weeks.

Kimmel joked that not paying people is what Trump does best before revealing his plan the workers:

This is day 17 of the government shutdown, nearly 800,000 federal employees are working without pay and that is Donald Trump doing what Donald Trump does best, not paying the people who work for him. That is where he shines.

It's unfortunate that these workers who have nothing to do with this ridiculous wall aren't getting paychecks, especially right after the holidays. 

So I wanted to do our part to pitch in. Tonight and every night until the shutdown is over, we're going to put a federal employee to work here at the show and we are going, to begin with this gentleman.

He then introduces to the stage a man named John Kostelnik, who is a law enforcement prison guard at the Federal Correctional Complex in Victorville, California.

John tells Kimmel that he 'objects' to being used as a pawn in the dispute over the wall and adds that he 'hopes' that he will get paid once the shutdown is over.

Kimmel then gives John the simple job of playing tambourine in his house band before adding; "That's what's called 'solving problems' folks."

There is no word on if the employees will be returning for every episode of the show or whether it will just be on a show-by-show basi,s but there is no denying that this is a great way to help out the employees who have been needlessly affected by this argument.

Watch the full segment in the video below.

HT Mashable

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