The government is, in many ways, more constrained in its actions particularly with respect to spending money than private entities. Its rules tend to be actual laws rather than just what some guy who has some amount of power to fire you said.
Lots of people are sneaking in work, I’m sure.
Besides no government departments are completely shut down (well maybe some tiny ones somewhere) so there is some flexibility. This flexibility will decrease with time as reserve accounts run dry.
The women and infants nutrition program, i believe, will operate fairly normally for about a week. Then it is a state/federal program so states may keep it going themselves a bit longer, depending on the state. So like 6 days, minimum, till a dramatic upsurge in poor mothers skipping meals and babies without formula.
The NIH research cancer treatment program is, I believe, continuing at like 90% spending for now just continuing with existing patients. The part that is shut down includes admitting new patients. That would tend to ramp spending down over time. Seems like the least problematic way to shut it down.
To whoever thinks the solution is to cut off the pay of legislators during such times consider: do you really want to give rich legislators another club with which to beat the few legislators who actually need their paychecks? Heck I say we start automatically paying them overtime as if they are working 16 hours a day because if that isn’t true we have worse problems.
i still cannot even remotely fathom why are you not in the streets! There’s about an 89% dissent with this measure, and you are doing NOTHING. In most countries, this sort of stuff sparks riots. What the hell, people.
Those public-sector union thugs, is there nothing they won’t do to thwart the will of the people? We tell them to stop working, and they come in and work for free, right in the faces of honest taxpayers!
It was the intent of those who shut down the government that these things would happen.
During the last shutdown I was working in a USDA research lab, where evening and weekend work was the norm. Nevertheless, we were ordered to go home and stay home. It was very annoying, but very low-stakes compared with the situation in hospitals etc.
It is the end of the budget year. Plus, typically departmental budgets are ‘use it or lose it’ kind of things. Congress told them they could use a specific amount of money over a specific time period. Once that time period is up or the money is out, legally they can’t continue to spend. In a way it makes sense. You want the different departments to be somewhat independent but you also don’t want to hand them a credit card with no limit. Also, government shutdowns aren’t common (1 major one in over 200 years, hopefully not a second one) so they aren’t something that anyone plans for.
People always want to compare government spending to what they’re most familiar with, business or personal spending. They aren’t the same thing and don’t work the same way.
Everything from the last few years has shown me that northamerican laziness can be trusted more than gravity. War crimes, secret wars, illegal prisoner camps, international spying, grounding foreign planes with a fucking president inside, shutting down cancer treatment for the fascists in the tea party, and so on. You can bet there will be no reaction. I don’t know if the american people realise the responsability they have in their hands on stopping this. You MUST rise up.
That’s why I used the word fund. With fund accounting, which may exist in many departments, the money IS there, and is payed out over the course of the fiscal year, annual audit, hopeful surplus.
Congress is not a bank. They do not sit there and transact down to the departmental line item by line item every day.
Now this makes more sense. If they are indeed already at their fiscal year’s end and there is no new budget, no new infusion to the fund, then there IS no money. So yes, this is starting to make more sense. Some places that were able to buy a surplus with consistent frugality in 2013 could continue to pay folks. Or places that already got their money from on high.
Has anyone compiled a thorough list of politicians responsible for shutdown? I’d like to keep it handy for the next election and I was surprised that I couldn’t seem to find one.
pretty easy. there have been numerous straight party line votes in the house
so if you think this is a great way to stop obamacare your list is every democrat in the senate (no more elections for the prez, eh probably need to toss in some senate republicans too), if you don’t it’s every republican in the house.
Friend of mine is a grad student in a research hospital and had to listen to docs calling children and telling them they couldn’t start NIH related cancer trial treatments.
The congresscritters most responsible live in districts where evolution, relativity, and the shape of the earth are still up for debate. Their seats are quite safe.
Of course, to be fair, most of their constituents are annoyed with the government shutdown and the fight against Obamacare too, because it is keeping their representatives from getting on to more important business, like repealing the 14th Amendment, putting God back in the classroom (and bedroom), and nuking Iran.
Mmm-Hm. And do you actually think those trials couldn’t be turned over to the universities for the meantime? (Where they likely belonged in the first place.) Or, to the hospitals themselves? Or, that the pharmaceuticals companies who are driving to get these products to market can’t (or didn’t already) provide funding and can easily provide more if they want to to keep things rolling?
Really? You actually think those childrens’ lives are the driver here? Because…
