Eight days from US government shutdown, Trump administration mum on contingency plans

Washington: With the US government eight days from its 15th partial shutdown since 1981, Washington is in familiar territory with an important difference: President Donald Trump's administration has not widely shared its plans for what functions will cease and what will continue if Congress fails to act.

The Office of Management and Budget this year asked federal agencies to update their contingency plans for how they will operate if funding runs out when the fiscal year ends on September 30. In past shutdowns functions like air-traffic control and law enforcement have continued, while financial regulators have furloughed the vast majority of their staffs.

Those plans were often shared weeks in advance heading into past shutdowns. But as of Monday, the current versions have not been widely shared with Congress or the public and White House web page dedicated to those plans was blank.

The White House and OMB did not respond when asked if these plans will be publicly released or if shutdown plans differ from previous years.

“Shutdowns create tremendous amount of uncertainty for federal workers and local economies,” said Rachel Snyderman, managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, adding these shutdown plans provide insight into who shows up to work with or without pay, and who is furloughed.

“There is no substitute for how the government would operate in a shutdown without the visibility that these plans provide,” said Snyderman, who served at OMB as a career staffer across several administrations.

The Republican-led House of Representatives passed a stopgap funding bill last week to extend funding through November 21, but it failed in the Senate where Republicans hold 53 of the 100 seats. Republicans blame Democrats for holding up the funding due to their opposition to the president whereas Democrats argue healthcare issues need to be addressed in this funding bill.

Both chambers are out all this week with the Senate not due to return to Washington until September 29.

Demand for plans

These plans also inform Congress how the executive branch will follow the Anti-deficiency Act, an 1884 law that prevents the federal government from spending money without funding passed into law.

“With the threat of a possible government shutdown looming, the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget must immediately release these updated contingency plans,” Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that oversees shutdown operations, said in a statement.

“Without them, Congress and the public are completely in the dark about how the Administration would comply with the law while continuing to carry out critical national security functions,” he added.

Government shutdowns impact federal agencies funded through discretionary spending and mostly do not impact government functions with mandatory spending -- such as Social Security payments, Medicare health programs and interest payments on the nation's debt -- which collectively account for about three-quarters of the roughly $7 trillion federal budget.

Usually, a week away from a lapse of appropriations OMB starts notifying agencies on the prospects of a shutdown, legislative possibilities, and other pertinent updates.

The Trump administration has reworked the federal government by changing priorities, and oversaw departure of an estimated 300,000 federal employees this year through firings, layoffs, and buyouts, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that tracks federal workforce trends.

The OMB has also challenged federal funding powers, which the Constitution grants to Congress with the power of the purse. On Capitol Hill, funding negotiations between Republican and Democratic appropriators were shaken after the OMB leader Russ Vought in July argued publicly this funding process should be “less bipartisan.”

Agencies have some leeway to determine which categories of employees to furlough or not, like an exception allowed within the law for roles to continue if “necessary to protect life and property.”

“The parameters of what’s in bounds is pretty well settled, but I would not be surprised if there was an attempt to try to test those bounds as that would be consistent with what we’ve seen from this administration related to appropriations,” said Joe Carlile, a former high-level Democratic budget official.

Three Senate committee aides said they have been informed by some agencies in their jurisdiction that these contingency plans were submitted to OMB for approval and the logistics were similar to plans under previous administrations, while other agencies have not provided any updates.

The last government shutdown was during Trump's first term, spanning 34 days from the end of December 2018 into January 2019, and certain decisions by the Trump administration to spend money for the National Park Service and on food assistance programs at the Agriculture Department were found to have violated the law, according to the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog funded by Congress.