Vilsack, USDA prepare for possible government shutdown

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Vilsack, USDA prepare for possible government shutdown
As the government nears a shutdown, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said furloughs at his department would take a longer time to carry out and wouldn’t be as dramatic initially as in some other departments.

Sep 30, 2013
By Christopher Doering
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In an interview, Vilsack said the department has no choice but to prepare for the possibility of a shutdown, a process he called very “complicated.”

USDA notified its employees late on Friday of their shutdown plans. An estimated 100,000 people work with the Agriculture Department.

The potential closure of the government, similar to the threat federal department faced in 2011, would spare essential employees at USDA engaged in protecting life and property such as Forest Service firefighters and food safety inspectors. USDA’s shutdown plans would keep 87 percent of the 9,633 employees at its Food Safety and Inspection Service, charged with protecting the safety of meat, poultry and eggs, on the job.

Vilsack said people whose programs not funded through the budget can continue to stay on the job. They may get paid retroactively Also remaining on the job would be workers whose jobs are paid for from money brought over from the prior budget year, so-called carryover money. They would stay until the funds run out.

At the USDA, a shutdown would halt enrollment in the Conservation Reserve Program and Farm Service Agency offices would close. A handful of FSA activities deemed essential to protecting property, such as emergency and natural disasters response, would not be affected.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, is funded through the Recovery Act and the monies do not expire for another year. As a result, the program would be spared during a shutdown.

Schools are reimbursed for lunch and other meal costs on a monthly basis and are allowed to carry over funds from the previous fiscal year. The USDA expects most schools will be able to continue providing meals through October.

“If you are like USDA and you got lots of different pots of money and lots of different portfolio requirements you are going to have two or three different groups of employees that will continue to work and over time those numbers of people will ultimately shrink to the point where they get down to the people who are working because they have to protect life and property,” Vilsack said.

“You got to do the prudent thing (and prepare for a shutdown), which is what happens if (Congress) doesn’t get their job done,” he said.

If Congress doesn’t pass a new spending bill, the federal government will shut down on Tuesday. An estimated 59 percent of non-defense federal employees would be exempt from the shutdown and would go to work as usual, according to a USA TODAY analysis of 119 shutdown contingency plans filed with the Office of Management and Budget.