Well its official folks – the government is “shutdown”.
No last minute compromises, no 11th hour deal means the U.S. government grinds to a stop.
Tens of thousands of federal workers, civilian contractors and government employees who wake up tomorrow are officially furloughed.
To help put this government shutdown into perspective, Congresswoman Jackie Speiers listed a laundry list of other consequences – they include the following:
“Commerce Department – Census Bureau – will forgo releasing economic data of new home sales
EPA – Toxic waste clean-up activities will grind to a halt. EPA would cease monitoring pollution and issue environmental impact permits
Health and Human Services (HHS) – Medicaid – there will be a processing delay of disability applications
Head Start – The federal Administration for Children and Families says grants expiring about Oct. 1 would not be renewed.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – The Food and Drug Administration would handle high-risk recalls and possibly suspend most routine safety inspections. Federal meat inspections would be expected to proceed as usual.
HUD – No new Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans
Interior Department – All national monuments, museums and parks will be closed
Labor Department – will forgo publishing gross domestic products statistics and releasing regularly scheduled economic reports such as unemployment claims numbers and Consumer Price Index
National Institutes of Health (NIH) – No new clinical trials, therefore, no new patients.
Small Business Administration (SBA) – approval of applications for direct loans to small businesses will cease
Social Security – Field offices – There will be no updates for earnings record corrections and updates, replacement of Medicare cards, benefit verifications and temporary discontinuation of FOIA requests.
“Social Security – State Disability Determination Services – Assistance requests for hearings and end-of-line quality assurance reviews will cease
State Department – U.S. Passports and visas will not be processed except in limited emergency circumstances
Treasury Department – IRS processing of paper tax filings and refunds will cease
USDA – SNAP benefits will continue through the month of October. No additional federal funds would be available to support the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infant and children (WIC) clinical services and food benefits. The child nutrition (CN) programs, including school lunches, school breakfast, child and adult care feeding summer food service and special milk will continue operations into October. No additional federal funds to support the commodity assistance programs (CAP) including the commodity supplemental food program (CSFP), the emergency food assistance program (TEFAP) administrative funding and the WIC farmers’ market nutrition program (FMNP).
Veterans Affairs – No decisions on claims appeals or motions will be issued by the Board of Veteran appeals. No new education and vocational rehabilitation benefits or new compensation and pension benefits will be processed. All VA outreach and public awareness activities will be suspended. There is a possibility of delayed checks if the federal government shutdown extends for several weeks” (source: Congresswoman Jackie Speiers http://speier.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1190)