Posted on 03/14/2011 4:40:13 PM PDT by Second Amendment First
Unsure from week to week how much money Congress will provide them as the two parties battle over the budget for the rest of this year, federal officials say many agencies have been operating in chaos, confusion and uncertainty.
Officials at various agencies have frozen hiring, canceled projects, delayed contracts, reduced grants and curtailed training, travel and upgrades in information technology.
In northern New Hampshire, a new federal prison, with space for 1,280 inmates, sits vacant because the federal government has not been able to hire correctional officers and other employees.
For some Head Start programs around the country, federal officials are renewing grants at 60 percent of last year’s levels. Local Head Start managers say parents, unsure of the whether there will continue to be space for their children, are trying to arrange alternative child care for preschoolers.
Michael J. Astrue, the commissioner of Social Security, said the agency had stopped sending out annual earnings-and-benefit statements and suspended plans to open eight hearing offices that would tackle a huge backlog of appeals by people seeking disability benefits.
Like most of the government, the Social Security Administration has been financed for more than five months with short-term spending bills known as continuing resolutions. Congress is expected to pass another three-week spending bill this week that will continue to pare financing back from last year’s level.
“Because of the uncertainty of our budget,” Mr. Astrue said, “I have had to make choices that will begin to erode service.”
The Federal Transit Administration is parceling out grants in proportion to the time covered by stopgap spending bills.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This is bogus. First of all, the bureaucrats will instinctively make the shutdown the most inconvenient for us, the taxpayers.
All agencies should be terminated asap.
How would we know .. as those conditions would seem to be business as usual for most government agencies.
Actually....it’s going on even within the military (I can attest to this fact). A significant portion of our budget is simply laying there in a untouchable status. Beyond the normal items of paper and toner...it’s just about impossible to discuss any significant expenditures. We are kidding around now that we might just make it through August and have a third of our entire budget sitting there to be spent in thirty days as we get into the September.
Here in NJ they’ve eliminated the mechanical part of auto inspection (of course you have to keep the emissions part), and they’ve extended a lot of inspections by 1 year (for younger cars, I think). More convenient for taxpayers; I don’t think they asked the Motor Vehicles people for their input...
[The Securities and Exchange Commission. . .is operating at 2010 spending levels, which were fixed before Congress vastly expanded its duties under a law signed last July.]
Shut it down.
Seems to me everything is business as usual........
Who's to blame for not passing a Budget in 2010? Pelosi an Reid that's who.
“Who’s to blame for not passing a Budget in 2010? Pelosi an Reid that’s who.”
Exactly the reason why there is no 2011 budget. That is what the writer should have focused on.
This is rich. After almost singlehandedly unleashing the scourge of homosexuality on the armed forces this RINO moonbat and her fellow traveller Gates are worried about military readiness. Precious!!
Gee, maybe some of this make believe turmoil could have been avoided if the rats passed a budget last year.
Sounds just like any other day for the federal government. What is the big deal supposed to be?
They need to watch more porn to calm down.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2688713/posts
Federal and States' bureaucrats have been playing this game for 50 years:
Assume there will be an increase in next year's budget, there always is, because otherwise it would be a cut. So we got to spend anything we have left by the end of our fiscal year. Dump stuff if you have to.
I saw it happening for 8 years.
How many of you have had to suffer through "upgrades in information technology," when the last iteration works perfectly, and most of the users have not advanced beyond the most elementary features?
Now multiply that by 1000 county emplyees. By the time they were all trained, learned the hands on nooks and crannies of the software... what happens? Time to start the cycle all over again.
Imagine the tens of thousand man-hours constantly wasted. Hey! it's not their money.
One of the absolutely essential changes to bureaucraies is universal Zero-based budgetting, and the external oversight necessary to see that the budget is actually honestly spent, when absolutely necessary. A "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" or "WTF" moment.
The reserves are on hold for any duty that’s not already funded, which means either we work for free (something the AD side never does) or we don’t support the mission. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got plenty to do right here at home, but I also have 160+ people to try to schedule in order for none of them to have a “bad year” (not enough points to get a year for retirement purposes).
Shut it down, fix it, and let’s roll already!
Colonel, USAFR
Well, as they keep reminding us, we all need to share the pain.
And, with taxpayers educating themselves more and more about the abuses, as far as I'm concerned, that tactic will blow up in their faces.
In any case, I'm willing to take the risk to effect permanent change.
The Summer of Recovery seems so long ago.
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