By now you all have probably heard that the partial federal government shutdown has ended. It lasted a whopping 35 days and is the longest shutdown in modern history. Roughly a quarter of the government was affected with federal government employees and contractors either being furloughed (not working and not getting paid) or operating as essential personnel (having to work without getting paid). While there is a deal in place for federal workers to receive the compensation they lost over this period, contractors are unfortunately not a part of it.
As I’m sure you know, the government shut down because Congress could not pass a bill that included the five plus billion dollars the President requested to build a barrier along the southern border of the United States that he opines will curb illegal immigration. I don’t want to get too deep into the politics of why the shutdown happened, but, I do want to put on your radar that it could happen again. While the President did sign a funding bill formally known as a continuing resolution (or ‘CR’ as we government folks call it) to reopen the shuttered federal agencies, it did not include the requested funding for the border wall.
The CR the President signed on January 25th to reopen the government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security, only provides funding through February 15th. Therefore, lawmakers have three weeks to come to an agreement the President approves of. To give some context, the border wall was a major part of Donald Trump’s campaign for President and is generally considered favorable by GOP legislators and unfavorable by Democratic legislators. I use the term generally here because obviously not every Republican is for the wall and not every Dem is against the wall. However, the wall has been viewed by most as a GOP-led initiative.
The President has made it clear that he doesn’t plan on signing any appropriations bill that doesn’t include wall funding and suggested he may declare a national emergency to fund the wall as a last resort. If he does opt to declare a national emergency, he will face a strong uphill court battle.
In the meantime, the federal agencies impacted by the shutdown are finally operating at full capacity and trying to get back into the swing of things but there is a lot of work to catch up on. This shutdown has caused irreparable damage to the U.S. economy to the tune of an estimated three billion dollars according to a new report released by the Congressional Budget Office. And, more importantly, the effect this had and will continue to have on federal government workers, contractors and their families who missed two paychecks and may have even lost their health insurance coverage or other benefits during this month-long impasse can’t be emphasized enough.
There is a bill that has been introduced that would formally end government shutdowns but it’s unclear how much traction it will gain in Congress. In the meantime, stay tuned for more chaos come mid-February (and I’m only half joking).
