The U.S. government went into its third funding-related shutdown of 2018 in the final days of the year.
Funding for about a quarter of the federal government expired at midnight, Dec. 21, resulting in a partial shutdown beginning Saturday, Dec. 22. As of press time, the partial shutdown was nearing the end of its first full week with no official indication of a restart.
Though the subsequent political fighting and blame-laying has claimed most of the shutdown-related attention, Agricultural Secretary Sonny Perdue released the USDA’s strategy in case of either a short or long shutdown.
“There may be a lapse in funding for the federal government, but that will not relieve USDA of its responsibilities for safeguarding life and property through the critical services we provide,” Perdue said in a late afternoon Dec. 21 statement.
“Our employees work hard every day to benefit our customers and the farmers, ranchers, foresters, and producers who depend on our programs. During a shutdown, we will leverage our existing resources as best we can to continue to provide the top-notch service people expect.”
Perdue’s statement outlined what USDA services would continue during the shutdown, and for how long, and what wouldn’t. The strategy included plans for if the shutdown was short (under a week) and if the shutdown was long (more than a week).
Among the services that would continue through Dec. 30 were:
• Maintenance of about 61 percent of USDA personnel, others furloughed;
• Meat, poultry, and processed egg inspection;
• Grain and other commodity inspection services;
• Import and export inspections;
• Some Forest Service activities, such as law enforcement, disaster response, some land management (excluding “forest fuels reduction activities in and around communities”);
• Care for feral horses and burros gathered off the range;
• Distribution of nutritional support program benefits such as food stamps for as long as funding remains;
• Some agricultural payment systems, such as direct payments through the Market Facilitation Program, disaster assistance payments, etc.; and
• The USDA’s Market News Service’s market reports.
If the funding lapse partial shutdown continued beyond into this week, several of those services would begin dropping away. Specifically, the volume of USDA employees exempted from being furloughed would begin to drop and agricultural payment systems would cease.
Some services were stopped immediately and would not be reinstated until the shutdown ends. These included:
• Issuing of new rural development loans and grants;
• All recreational sites in the U.S. National Forest System;
• Many forest-related activities including fuel load reduction and new timber sales;
• Many National Agricultural Statistic Service reports such as the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report and other ag-related economic and statistical reports;
• Investigation of packers and stockyards related to fraudulent and anti-competitive activities;
• Animal research facilities, except for animal care; and
• Economic Research Service reports, such as outlook reports, analyses, and projections, with total public website shutdown (i.e., no access to past reports) if the shutdown extended beyond a week.
During the first week of the shutdown, many USDA-based websites either contained notices that they were no longer being maintained or were entirely offline. Department of the Interior sites were also affected. For example, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Environmental Conservation Online System website, which most centrally houses the Endangered Species List with information on listed or proposed species, was down, citing the shutdown.
Reopening stonewalled?
When the government might “reopen” to its full capacity is unknown. The point of contention that held up the partial funding bill that would have staved off the shutdown was funding for the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
On Christmas Day, Trump told reporters, “I can’t tell you when the government is going to be open. … I can tell you, it’s not going to be open until we have a wall, a fence, whatever they’d like to call it.”
Through a series of holiday weekend tweets and media appearances following the shutdown, the president variously blamed congressional Democrats for not providing his demanded $5 billion for the border wall and expounded on its importance to national security.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12), in a joint Christmas Eve statement, characterized the situation as too polarized for a satisfactory compromise on the funding bill.
According to DTN’s Washington Insider, the chances that the partial shutdown will continue into 2019 are strong. This comes supposedly from inconsistent statements of demands from the White House on the wall funding, as well as lack of sufficient support for it in Congress. — WLJ
