What Will the Government Stop Mean to You?
If Congress fails to approve the 2016 budget by September 30, i.e. before the end of this fiscal year, the US government will close its operations. This is a likely scenario as lawmakers only have a few working days left to come to an agreement, and there is no sign of it. Here’s what you need to know about how government shutdowns can affect you.
What is government shutdown and why is it happening?
Without an approved budget plan, government agencies will no longer have access to federal funds from October 1. In fact, it’s like a business that has no cash flow and is forced to put up signs that say “Sorry, we’re closed.” If a government shutdown occurs, some government services will continue to operate thanks to the Deficit Fighting Act (nice name, right?), Which allows “core” government services such as military and air traffic control to continue operating even without authorized funds. … However, many government functions – from national parks and federally funded scientific research to food inspections and new prescription drug approvals – will be suspended during holidays until Congress decides.
This is not the first time the country has faced the prospect of a halt. In October 2013, the government halted operations for 16 days , and before that we had the longest shutdown in US history – a 21-day shutdown in 1995-96 . In all of these cases, it is not an overt budget disagreement between our legislators: it is a political confrontation where one side refuses to accept the budget on controversial issues. In 2013, the battle was fought over Obamacare, when the Republican-led House of Representatives (led by Senator Ted Cruise) tried to postpone or abandon the Affordable Care Act. During the closure in 1995-96, there was a battle between the Republican-controlled Congress and President Clinton over funding for medical care, education, the environment, and public health.
This year we are talking about planned parenthood . The Republican-led House of Representatives ( again starring Ted Cruz ) voted to phase out funding for a women’s health care provider who receives more than $ 500 million a year in government funding – 40 percent of the organization’s total revenue of 1.3 billion dollars a year .
While abortion is at the center of the planned parenting debate – following the emergence of controversial videos in which the organization allegedly discusses fetal tissue donation – most parenting planning services include sexually transmitted disease screening, contraception and other health services. women such as cancer. screening.
Democrats are expected to block the bill in the Senate, but if the bill hits President Obama’s desk, the White House says it will veto it. However, at least 28 Conservative Republicans have vowed not to approve any budget that includes funding for the Planned Parenthood program. So, we are at an impasse, the deadline for the budget is approaching.
Who is affected by the government shutdown?
Job outages have a direct impact on federal employees, as most of them won’t get paid while on vacation, but the rest of us taxpayers also end up paying the price.
Which federal employees will be affected
Not all of the current 4 million federal employees will stop receiving pay during the shutdown. Some agencies, such as the United States Postal Service, are independent of Congressional appropriations (the Post Office receives revenue from postage and other services), so they will continue to operate as normal. Hooray, we will still receive mail!
For federal employees who are not members of these exempt agencies, whether they continue to work will depend on whether they are “excluded” or “not excluded.” According to the Office of Human Resources Management (OPM) :
“Exempt employees” include employees who (1) perform emergency work related to the safety of human life or protect property, (2) perform the minimum steps necessary to perform an orderly suspension of agency operations related to non-excluded activities, or (3) perform some other types of freed work. The agency’s legal counsel, working with senior agency executives, determines which staff members are assigned to perform “excluded” and “non-excluded” functions.
Excluded employees will continue to operate as usual during a stop, but they will not be paid until the payment until it is resolved. (Congressmen, by the way, continue to receive salaries .)
Non-excluded employees will be forced to stop working (even on a volunteer basis) and will not be paid at the time of closure either. According to the Washington Post , these laid-off employees will not be able to take paid leave, such as annual leave, during this period, they cannot borrow from their savings plan accounts, and they will have to pay back their share of health. insurance premiums accumulated during the shutdown after they return to work. This is a rough deal for them, but there is a good chance that they will receive money later during this time:
Whether the dismissed employees will be paid for this time later is up to Congress and the White House. The precedent is that they are later paid for, and a law has already been introduced in the Senate to guarantee this in the event of a repeated shutdown. (In the spring and summer of 2013, some agencies had a separate set of unpaid leave related to the ‘sequestration’ budget cap; later these employees were not paid for this time.)
Although the previous outages lasted only a few weeks, the threat of a new one is already having its consequences. Can you imagine being forced to work (or forced not to work) without knowing if you will be paid? At the time of the 2013 shutdown, 1.3 million non-postal federal employees were working without pay, 850,000 non-postal federal employees were laid off, and more than 250,000 federal contractors were affected.
How the government closure will affect the rest of us
Even if you don’t work for the government, stopping can affect you. First, federal agencies are now committing resources to address potential shutdowns, which means that normal tasks are overlooked and the quality of these services suffers. Second, as Chris Cummiski writes in the Federal Times , new ideas and programs that help people freeze in time. Most importantly, during a shutdown, important services will be stopped.
Unlike the last closure, the Supplemental Food Assistance Program (also known as food stamps) is likely to end its monthly food benefits for the 45 million Americans who depend on it. In 2013, the agency had contingency funds, but they no longer exist.
As for what other government services we can expect to close, we can refer to OMB ‘s 2013 closure report :
Research, health and safety services have stopped . NASA shut down and most of the staff at the National Institute of Standards and Testing (NIST), the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control have been laid off. Not only experimental research has been suspended:
- Reducing the monitoring of the influenza season left us without national data for the influenza season for two weeks
- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was unable to inspect 1,200 facilities, including hazardous waste storage and drinking water systems.
- Hundreds of patients have failed to complete clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health.
- FDA postpones over 850 food safety audits
The federal government has lost billions of dollars (i.e. taxpayer money). OPM estimates that roughly $ 2.5 billion was lost due to reduced productivity of laid-off employees and costs incurred by the government due to non-performance of services. A plus:
In addition, the federal government also incurred other direct costs as a result of the shutdown. Fees remained unpaid; IRS enforcement and other program integrity measures have been stopped; and the federal government had to pay additional interest on payments that were delayed due to the shutdown.
During the shutdown, fewer jobs were created than expected. About 120,000 private sector jobs will be down because things like trade licenses and applications have been put on hold, federal permits and other inspections have been put on hold (delaying job creation in energy and transportation projects), and loans to small businesses have been put on hold. business.
Credit and economic programs for individuals were postponed. This affected a wide variety of people:
- Veterans: Increased Number of Veterans’ Appeals for Disability
- Anyone Awaiting Tax Refunds: Refunds totaling $ 4 billion have been delayed.
- Future Homeowners: Home Loan Decisions Delayed
- Low-Income Families: Head Start Centers, which provide nutrition and health screenings for low-income children, have been closed for more than a week.
- Immigrants seeking citizenship: 16 out of 58 immigration courts closed
- Travelers: passports and visas are no longer issued
- Social Security recipients: The Social Security Administration has suspended processing of thousands of claims for medical disability and Supplemental Insurance Benefit (SSI).
National museums, zoos and parks are closed. Lack of access to these national resources causes us more than just inconvenience: the communities surrounding national parks and monuments lost significant income during the stop. During this time, the National Park Service estimates that we have lost more than $ 500 million due to missing visitors across the country, and the service itself has lost about $ 7 million in direct revenue. Smithsonian lost $ 4 million in revenue.
Let’s also not forget that Pokemon X and Y were delayed and during that time we lost access to new beer !
Seriously though, the overall estimated economic cost of a shutdown is between $ 12 billion and $ 24 billion . It was only 16 days, but a very expensive 16 days. This time we are faced with another possible shutdown at rather low rates: 1/50 of 1 percent of the state budget .
What’s next
This is clearly not the best way to manage it. Few in Washington or outside Washington – with the exception of a few Republican presidential candidates – want closure. A CNN poll shows that 71% of Americans believe it is more important for Congress to approve the budget and avoid closings, compared with 22% who think it is more important to end funding for the family planning program.
Even the Republican Party, which will likely be accused of stopping, is also divided over this. Some Republican leaders are calling for reconciliation: pass a law prohibiting funding for the Planned Parenthood program and decouple it entirely from the federal budget. Other conservatives, however, decry the plan , saying that even if the bill gets through to the president, he will veto it, while a government shutdown, they think, will force Obama to agree to withdraw funding from the Planned Parenthood program. During the 2013 closure, this heavy weaponry tactic did not work. Republican leaders relented and agreed on their stance against Obamacare, a new spending bill was passed, and the closure is finally over.
It is unclear at this point whether the government is going to shut down or not, and members of both sides are devising strategies to prevent the shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced interim legislation that would keep the government open until December 11, but redirect Planned Parenthood funding to community health centers. Congress is expected to vote on the matter on Thursday, but it is also expected to be rejected by Senate Democrats, who want to pass a “clean” spending bill without defunding. (Even if this interim measure is taken, the eventual stop will only be delayed until December.)
One budget expert estimates that there is a 75% chance of stopping . All we know for sure is that the victims of this war are the taxpayers and US employees .
As individuals, there is little we can do right now with the potential government shutdown. However, we can make donations to our national parks, zoos and museums, and we can contact our representatives in Congress to tell them how we want them to act and vote in these next few critical days. The good news is that voter pressure – which is what helped the members of Congress decide on the last stop – may be enough to get them to avoid another stop.