A guide to the government shutdown at the Agriculture Department
September 30, 2013 | 04:50 PM
If the Agriculture Department shuts down at midnight tonight, food stamp benefits will be delivered for the month of October, forest fires will continue to be fought, meat and poultry will still be inspected, grain inspection will continue, laboratory animals will be fed and the rural development division will still monitor government loans.
But USDA will not release any new production statistics, most of the rest of USDA will shut down and its website may go dark.
The situation at the Agricultural Marketing Service is complicated because some AMS programs are funded through user fees and will continue to operate while others are funded through appropriations and will not.
Those are the main points from a Hagstrom Report analysis of the shutdown plans and procedures for each division posted on the USDA website late Friday. USDA mission areas varied in the detail of their shutdown plans, however.
All USDA employees will be furloughed — put on temporary leave — except those that have “excepted” status because “they are performing emergency work involving the safety of human life or the protection of property or performing certain other types of excepted work.”
Agency legal counsels, working with senior agency managers, determine which employees are designated to to handle “excepted” and “non-excepted” functions,” according to the USDA shutdown plan.
If the shutdown takes place, the guidance to employees says that all non-excepted employees will be expected to report to work on Tuesday “for the sole purpose of engaging in orderly shutdown activities.”
“Supervisors will provide employees with instructions to shut down their activities and secure property in their offices, leave out-of-office phone and email messages, complete timesheets, etc.,” the document says. “Excepted employees should be instructed to report for work and to perform their excepted activities as required. For those teleworking, ‘report’ may be done by telephone.”
“Employees are required to report for duty on their flexible work day if it is the day before an anticipated lapse in appropriations to conduct an orderly shutdown of their work even if it is their flexible work day and they were not scheduled to come to report for duty.”
In most cases, the guidance says, furloughed employees should take no more than three or four hours to “provide necessary notices and contact information, secure their files, complete time and attendance records, and otherwise make preparations to preserve their work.”
But some agencies have said it will take several days to complete an orderly shutdown.
USDA may not accept the services of any employees who volunteer to do their jobs without pay during the furlough, the guidance says, because “the Antideficiency Act prohibits agencies from accepting voluntary labor for services that are not essential, vital to the protection of life and property, during a shutdown. Federal officials or employees who violate rules can be fined up to $5,000 or sent to prison for two years.”
Nineteen people in Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s office will be excepted from furlough status, including Vilsack himself. The others are Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden, Vilsack’s Chief of Staff Brian Baenig, two deputy chiefs of staff to Vilsack, Harden’s acting chief of staff, the seven undersecretaries, three assistant secretaries, the deputy undersecretary for farm and foreign agricultural services, one senior budget adviser and the director for scheduling.
Employees in the secretary’s office on furlough status will not be allowed to communicate using handheld electronic devices including smartphones.
Will continue activities essential to protect life and property such as the security of the secretary, emergency and natural disasters response, protection of federal lands, buildings, waterways, equipment and support for cyber security and infrastructure.
Will close.
Will close, although the director, regional assistant directors and a few other employees will be excepted.
The director and associate director will report to work to support policy officials for at least five days.
Will close, including the Climate Change Program Office, Office of Energy Policy and New Uses, Office of Environmental Markets, Office of Risk Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis, and the World Agricultural Outlook Board.
All but eight employees will go on furlough.
Only two of 78 employees are excepted. The USDA.gov website will go dark “unless otherwise directed” by the Office of Management and Budget. Press releases will not be generated, USDA will have no contact with the media, and no reports will be issued.
Will close.
Not more than seven employees agency-wide will remain to provide the required legal services for the department, but four additional employees may continue to provide services in support of user fee-funded programs which require no appropriation in advance.
Six employees will be excepted: the inspector general, who is presidentially appointed; the assistant inspector general for management, and employees involved in human resources, classification and staffing, accounting, information technology, telecommunications and client services. All audit and investigations staff will be furloughed.
Will be partially open. The following programs will continue to be operated because they are not funded through appropriations:
The following programs, normally operated by 424 employees, will not operate because they are funded through appropriations:
In addition some administrative functions funded through a combination of appropriated and non-appropriated funds will be subject to a “partial furlough.”
APHIS’s shutdown report does not identify what functions, if any, will continue to operate.
Will close down all offices, including county offices, except for emergency and natural disasters response. The agency can continue to use “remaining discretionary prior year unobligated balances (carryover, within authorized apportionment unless the debt ceiling is reached)” and user fees collected under the U.S. Warehouse Act.
Will continue to provide funding for some anti-hunger programs but not others.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will continue operations and eligible households will still receive monthly benefits for October. The authority to make October benefit payments comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, through which Congress provided “such sums as are necessary” to finance SNAP.
In addition, about $2 billion in contingency funding will be available and could be used to support state administrative activities essential to continue the program and issue benefits. These contingency funds were provided in the fiscal year 2013 appropriation and do not expire until the end of fiscal year 2014.
No additional federal funds will be available to support the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)’s clinical services, food benefits and administrative costs. States may have some funds available from infant formula rebates or other sources, including spend-forward authority, to continue operations for a week or so, but states would likely be unable to sustain operations for a longer period. Contingency funds will be available to help states — but even this funding would not fully mitigate a shortfall for the entire month of October.
The child nutrition programs, including school lunch, school breakfast, child and adult care feeding, summer food service and special milk will continue into October. Meal providers are paid on a reimbursement basis 30 days after the end of the service month. Limited carryover funding will be available during a lapse to support fiscal year 2014 meal service.
“Once an appropriation is enacted, we expect additional resources will be available to reimburse October performance,” the guidance states. “In addition, most state agencies will continue to have fiscal year 2013 funds available for State Administrative Expenses (SAE). SAE funds are awarded to states for a two-year grant period and they are permitted to carryover up to 20 percent of their allocation into the second year of the grant period.”
No additional federal funds will be available 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’ Markets Nutrition Program (FMNP).
Similarly, no new funds will be available to support the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). While there will be some inventory available for use in food packages, no carryover, contingency or other funds will be available to support continued operations.
Meat, poultry and egg product inspections will continue, and 87 percent of the agency’s 9,633 employees will be still on the job.
About 404 of the agency’s 944 U.S. and foreign national employees are expected to remain on the job but the situation is complicated by the fact that FAS officers are posted worldwide.
GIPSA will continue to provide inspection and weighing services that are supported by user fees.
Of the 743 total GIPSA employees, 528 will stay on the job, including 100 positions that are partially funded by user fees. These positions will work each day in accordance with their user fee funding.
The 528 positions also include 149 full time intermittent employees. These employees are necessary during this time of season to support GIPSA grain and related commodity inspection and weighing program activities.
The remaining 215 GIPSA positions will be subject to furlough in accordance with this plan.
All activities will cease except for the protection of life and property.
This mission area, which includes the Agricultural Research Service, Economic Research Service, National Agricultural Statistics Service, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture will care for animals, plants and associated infrastructure to protect federal government property but the following activities will not take place:
Market news reports, NASS statistics, and other agricultural economic and statistical reports and projections;
Research, except for the care for animals, plants and associated infrastructure;
Provision of new grants or processing of payments for existing grants to support research, education, and extension; and
ERS Commodity Outlook Reports, Data Products, research reports, staff analysis, and projections. The ERS public website would be taken offline.
Closed. “There will be no activities continued. There will be no employees reporting to work.”
Will not make any new loans or grants for programs such as rental housing or electricity or business development to improve rural economies, but 53 employees will be on the job to protect the government’s loans portfolio, which exceeds $190 billion and serves as collateral for loans, and borrowers’ funds paid to RD in escrow for real estate taxes and property insurance. Processing of remittances will continue.
Firefighters and law enforcement personnel needed to protect equipment, life and property will stay on the job, and the service will retain its capability to respond to respond to emergencies and natural disasters.
But USDA will not release any new production statistics, most of the rest of USDA will shut down and its website may go dark.
The situation at the Agricultural Marketing Service is complicated because some AMS programs are funded through user fees and will continue to operate while others are funded through appropriations and will not.
Those are the main points from a Hagstrom Report analysis of the shutdown plans and procedures for each division posted on the USDA website late Friday. USDA mission areas varied in the detail of their shutdown plans, however.
All USDA employees will be furloughed — put on temporary leave — except those that have “excepted” status because “they are performing emergency work involving the safety of human life or the protection of property or performing certain other types of excepted work.”
Agency legal counsels, working with senior agency managers, determine which employees are designated to to handle “excepted” and “non-excepted” functions,” according to the USDA shutdown plan.
If the shutdown takes place, the guidance to employees says that all non-excepted employees will be expected to report to work on Tuesday “for the sole purpose of engaging in orderly shutdown activities.”
“Supervisors will provide employees with instructions to shut down their activities and secure property in their offices, leave out-of-office phone and email messages, complete timesheets, etc.,” the document says. “Excepted employees should be instructed to report for work and to perform their excepted activities as required. For those teleworking, ‘report’ may be done by telephone.”
“Employees are required to report for duty on their flexible work day if it is the day before an anticipated lapse in appropriations to conduct an orderly shutdown of their work even if it is their flexible work day and they were not scheduled to come to report for duty.”
In most cases, the guidance says, furloughed employees should take no more than three or four hours to “provide necessary notices and contact information, secure their files, complete time and attendance records, and otherwise make preparations to preserve their work.”
But some agencies have said it will take several days to complete an orderly shutdown.
USDA may not accept the services of any employees who volunteer to do their jobs without pay during the furlough, the guidance says, because “the Antideficiency Act prohibits agencies from accepting voluntary labor for services that are not essential, vital to the protection of life and property, during a shutdown. Federal officials or employees who violate rules can be fined up to $5,000 or sent to prison for two years.”
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
Nineteen people in Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s office will be excepted from furlough status, including Vilsack himself. The others are Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden, Vilsack’s Chief of Staff Brian Baenig, two deputy chiefs of staff to Vilsack, Harden’s acting chief of staff, the seven undersecretaries, three assistant secretaries, the deputy undersecretary for farm and foreign agricultural services, one senior budget adviser and the director for scheduling.
Employees in the secretary’s office on furlough status will not be allowed to communicate using handheld electronic devices including smartphones.
DEPARTMENTAL MANAGEMENT
Will continue activities essential to protect life and property such as the security of the secretary, emergency and natural disasters response, protection of federal lands, buildings, waterways, equipment and support for cyber security and infrastructure.
OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
Will close.
NATIONAL APPEALS DIVISION
Will close, although the director, regional assistant directors and a few other employees will be excepted.
OFFICE OF BUDGET AND PROGRAM ANALYSIS
The director and associate director will report to work to support policy officials for at least five days.
OFFICE OF THE CHIEF ECONOMIST
Will close, including the Climate Change Program Office, Office of Energy Policy and New Uses, Office of Environmental Markets, Office of Risk Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis, and the World Agricultural Outlook Board.
OFFICE OF THE CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
All but eight employees will go on furlough.
OFFICE OF COMMUNCATIONS
Only two of 78 employees are excepted. The USDA.gov website will go dark “unless otherwise directed” by the Office of Management and Budget. Press releases will not be generated, USDA will have no contact with the media, and no reports will be issued.
OFFICE OF ETHICS
Will close.
OFFICE OF THE GENERAL COUNSEL
Not more than seven employees agency-wide will remain to provide the required legal services for the department, but four additional employees may continue to provide services in support of user fee-funded programs which require no appropriation in advance.
OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL
Six employees will be excepted: the inspector general, who is presidentially appointed; the assistant inspector general for management, and employees involved in human resources, classification and staffing, accounting, information technology, telecommunications and client services. All audit and investigations staff will be furloughed.
AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE
Will be partially open. The following programs will continue to be operated because they are not funded through appropriations:
- Cotton classing
- Cotton standards
- Tobacco inspection
- Dairy grading
- Milk market administration
- Specialty crops inspection
- Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act
- Cattle futures
- Meat grading
- Seed inspection trust (excluding appropriated Federal Seed Act activities)
- Poultry grading
- Laboratory services
- Plant variety protection
- Commodity purchase services
- Research and promotion programs
The following programs, normally operated by 424 employees, will not operate because they are funded through appropriations:
- Country-of-origin labeling
- Federal seed
- Market news
- Marketing agreements and orders
- National Organic Standards Program
- Pesticide Data Program
- Pesticide recordkeeping
- Shell egg surveillance
- Standardization
- Transportation and market development
- Specialty crop block grant administration
- Payments to states
- Compliance Direct
- Market news support
- Regulatory review
In addition some administrative functions funded through a combination of appropriated and non-appropriated funds will be subject to a “partial furlough.”
ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE
APHIS’s shutdown report does not identify what functions, if any, will continue to operate.
FARM SERVICE AGENCY
Will close down all offices, including county offices, except for emergency and natural disasters response. The agency can continue to use “remaining discretionary prior year unobligated balances (carryover, within authorized apportionment unless the debt ceiling is reached)” and user fees collected under the U.S. Warehouse Act.
FOOD, NUTRITION AND CONSUMER SERVICES
Will continue to provide funding for some anti-hunger programs but not others.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will continue operations and eligible households will still receive monthly benefits for October. The authority to make October benefit payments comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, through which Congress provided “such sums as are necessary” to finance SNAP.
In addition, about $2 billion in contingency funding will be available and could be used to support state administrative activities essential to continue the program and issue benefits. These contingency funds were provided in the fiscal year 2013 appropriation and do not expire until the end of fiscal year 2014.
No additional federal funds will be available to support the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)’s clinical services, food benefits and administrative costs. States may have some funds available from infant formula rebates or other sources, including spend-forward authority, to continue operations for a week or so, but states would likely be unable to sustain operations for a longer period. Contingency funds will be available to help states — but even this funding would not fully mitigate a shortfall for the entire month of October.
The child nutrition programs, including school lunch, school breakfast, child and adult care feeding, summer food service and special milk will continue into October. Meal providers are paid on a reimbursement basis 30 days after the end of the service month. Limited carryover funding will be available during a lapse to support fiscal year 2014 meal service.
“Once an appropriation is enacted, we expect additional resources will be available to reimburse October performance,” the guidance states. “In addition, most state agencies will continue to have fiscal year 2013 funds available for State Administrative Expenses (SAE). SAE funds are awarded to states for a two-year grant period and they are permitted to carryover up to 20 percent of their allocation into the second year of the grant period.”
No additional federal funds will be available 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’ Markets Nutrition Program (FMNP).
Similarly, no new funds will be available to support the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). While there will be some inventory available for use in food packages, no carryover, contingency or other funds will be available to support continued operations.
FOOD SAFETY AND INSPECTION SERVICE
Meat, poultry and egg product inspections will continue, and 87 percent of the agency’s 9,633 employees will be still on the job.
FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL SERVICE
About 404 of the agency’s 944 U.S. and foreign national employees are expected to remain on the job but the situation is complicated by the fact that FAS officers are posted worldwide.
GRAIN INSPECTION, PACKERS AND STOCKYARDS ADMINISTRATION
GIPSA will continue to provide inspection and weighing services that are supported by user fees.
Of the 743 total GIPSA employees, 528 will stay on the job, including 100 positions that are partially funded by user fees. These positions will work each day in accordance with their user fee funding.
The 528 positions also include 149 full time intermittent employees. These employees are necessary during this time of season to support GIPSA grain and related commodity inspection and weighing program activities.
The remaining 215 GIPSA positions will be subject to furlough in accordance with this plan.
NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE
All activities will cease except for the protection of life and property.
RESEARCH, EDUCATION AND ECONOMICS
This mission area, which includes the Agricultural Research Service, Economic Research Service, National Agricultural Statistics Service, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture will care for animals, plants and associated infrastructure to protect federal government property but the following activities will not take place:
Market news reports, NASS statistics, and other agricultural economic and statistical reports and projections;
Research, except for the care for animals, plants and associated infrastructure;
Provision of new grants or processing of payments for existing grants to support research, education, and extension; and
ERS Commodity Outlook Reports, Data Products, research reports, staff analysis, and projections. The ERS public website would be taken offline.
RISK MANAGEMENT
Closed. “There will be no activities continued. There will be no employees reporting to work.”
RURAL DEVELOPMENT
Will not make any new loans or grants for programs such as rental housing or electricity or business development to improve rural economies, but 53 employees will be on the job to protect the government’s loans portfolio, which exceeds $190 billion and serves as collateral for loans, and borrowers’ funds paid to RD in escrow for real estate taxes and property insurance. Processing of remittances will continue.
U.S. FOREST SERVICE
Firefighters and law enforcement personnel needed to protect equipment, life and property will stay on the job, and the service will retain its capability to respond to respond to emergencies and natural disasters.
