House passes funding bill, but shutdown still possible
The House of Representatives passed a stopgap budget measure after midnight on Sept. 23, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said it wouldn't get through the Senate, meaning a government shutdown is still possible. However, at least one expert is downplaying the impending threat of a shutdown.
To avoid a federal government shutdown, Congress must pass legislation by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. A measure that would provide $3.7 billion for disaster relief was attached to a stopgap funding measure to keep the government operational into mid-November. After one funding bill failed in the House Wednesday evening, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) spent Thursday convincing Republicans to support the measure with minor changes, the Washington Post reported.
However, without Senate passage, the bill won't avert a shutdown. At issue is funding for disaster relief.
John Palguta, vice president of the Partnership for Public Service, interviewed before the bill passed the House, downplayed the shutdown risk.
“If this was the first time this came up in the calendar year, I think people would be more" worried, he said. “But I have to say that they’re almost becoming immune. It’s like, ‘here we go again.’ And I don’t think they’re hyperventilating, as much as I think they might have.”
Palguta said the odds are against a shutdown and that there will be a push to pass the overall legislation. Still, he said, there is that “22 percent possibility that it doesn’t happen.”
“Congress follows the polls, and they know their approval ratings are rock bottom,” he said. “They recognize that if there were a shutdown, it’s not going to help anybody. It surely doesn’t help the executive branch get its job done.”
As for whether federal employees should worry, Palguta had a straightforward answer.
“It’s not worth worrying about,” he said. “For one: There’s nothing you can do about it, if you’re a federal employee. It’s always a good philosophy to not worry about the things you can’t control anyway. And two: We’ve been through the drill; we know if it’s going to happen, you’ll get the heads-up – at the last moment. And because we’ve been through the shutdown before, we know basically how it will unfold. There will be plenty of time to worry about if it does happen.”
If the shutdown does in fact happen, Palguta said that federal employees could be hit where it hurts most: their pocketbooks.
“They’re not guaranteed to get paid,” he said. “In prior shutdowns, employees got back pay. But as it was discussed before the last possible shutdown on the appropriations reasons earlier this year, the mood in Congress, the budget situation, is brutal enough that there’s a possibility that employees would not receive back pay. Literally, it’s up to Congress to decide, and right now they’re not being particularly beneficent toward federal employees, so no guarantees.”