Posted on 12/26/2018 8:03:11 AM PST by Drew68
As the government shutdown loomed over the holidays, heads of federal agencies and departments overseeing health and public assistance services tweeted that, regardless of what was happening in Washington, they were attending, as much as possible, to business as usual.
In a statement over the holiday weekend, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said, “There may be a lapse in funding for the federal government, but that will not relieve USDA of its responsibilities for safeguarding life and property through the critical services we provide.”
According to the statement, 61% of the Department of Agriculture’s employees would continue to work through the first week of the shutdown, but that number would decrease the longer the shutdown continues.
Some of the agency’s offices to be hit hardest by the closure include the office of Food and Nutrition Services that oversees the Child Nutrition, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). By the end of the fifth day of the shutdown, staffing will be cut by 95%.
As of Tuesday, the department website displayed a message stating, “Due to a lapse in federal funding, this USDA website will not be actively updated. Once funding has been re-established, online operations will continue.”
Eligible households will still receive monthly SNAP benefits for January. But other domestic nutrition assistance programs such as the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, WIC, and the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations will only be operational based on available resources. Additional federal funds and commodities will not be provided during the shutdown.
Child nutrition programs including School Lunch, School Breakfast, Child and Adult Care Feeding, Summer Food Service and Special Milk will continue through February.
The Department of Agriculture will maintain meat, poultry and processed egg inspection services. Inspections of food imports and exports will also continue throughout the shutdown.
An end to the shutdown didn’t appear to be in sight Tuesday, as President Trump dug his heels in over the budget. After a call with US Troops, the President said, “I can’t tell you when the government is going to be open. I can tell you it’s not going to be open until we have a wall, a fence, whatever they would like to call it.”
Protecting and enhancing the well being of Americans The Department of Health and Human Services expects that nearly 8,000 federal employees would not be returning to work on Wednesday as the shutdown continues. That number equals about a quarter of the department’s employees.
Most of the department is funded through the fiscal year, and those positions and divisions that are being placed on leave are funded through Agriculture and Interior appropriations.
For the Department of Health and Human Services, among the activities that would continue are Indian Health Service clinics, response efforts from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and specific activities under the Food and Drug Administration, including responding to emergencies and managing high-risk recalls.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar reassured the country that the department’s public health missions are being maintained, despite the holiday and shutdown.
“Thousands of my @HHSGov colleagues routinely work weekends and holidays, and many are tasked with working through shutdowns, to fulfill our mission to protect and enhance the health and well-being of all Americans. I’m grateful for their commitment & proud to be their colleague,” Azar said on Twitter.
According to the Department, the FDA’s missions that are critical to public health, such as tracking and responding to outbreaks related to foodborne illness and the flu, supporting high-risk food and medical product recalls, pursuing criminal and certain civil investigations when public health may be at risk, screening food and medical products imported into the United States, and addressing other critical public health issues will continue through the shutdown.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb expressed his gratitude to FDA employees who were continuing to work through the closure. “I’m so proud to lead an agency driven by so many dedicated people. Working on a holiday, and through a government shutdown, to fulfill their commitment to America,” Gottlieb said on Twitter.
As of Tuesday night, the agency website displayed a message titled “FDA Lapse in Funding” on the top of its homepage. The message says, in part, that “agency operations continue to the extent permitted by law, such as activities necessary to address imminent threats to the safety of human life and activities funded by carryover user fee funds.”
According to HHS, about 41% of the FDA’s staff would be furloughed as of Wednesday, December 26.
The Department said that approximately 65% of staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will not be returning to work that day either.
Beat me to it. That paragraph jumped out at me as well. And that doesn’t even include all of the programs, like WIC.
And yes, you have that right on school meals. The main school district in Houston offers free breakfast and lunch to all students year round. They recently expanded it to include the only 1/3 of students who were not already eligible under a means tested program.
But if we are feeding these kids breakfast and lunch, why are their parents getting food stamps for the same meals?
Stocking up on more popcorn.
It’s not a shutdown. It’s a partial freeze on funding of some departments of the government. The media exists to scare the public into thinking that they will not get their precious benefits.
Carefully chosen words, to create the maximum anxiety:
“Loomed”
“hit hardest”
They will go 24/7 with “The latest on the government shutdown”.
The president is exposing the fraud and corruption in our federal government for everyone to see, but too many of our countrymen would rather believe the garbage CNN, ABC, The NY Slimes and the DC Compost are spewing out there. I’m always an optimist, but I have to be honest and admit to feeling a growing pessimism for our nation’s future. Too many Americans have their heads shoved up where the sun don’t shine!
If this keeps up, all those food stamp and EBT users are likely to abandon the Republican Party and start voting Democrat. /s
A question often asked, never answered (although we already know why).
They started yesterday on Memphis’ local news. Government is basically shut down for 8 days in the next 14. 2 Back to back Holidays. And Government doesn’t work Saturday or Sundays. Except the Military, Police, EMTS.
Teachers have 2 weeks off.
Most people on Food stamps are ILLEGALS.
BUILD THE PEOPLE’S WALL https://www.gofundme.com/TheTrumpWall?fbclid=IwAR3xP0bZu0OdwzQzVqK7Hpu5kDxjRwLDMbYRhrZ3lHCQ9Bju2JEd1WzsFSk
$17,188,588 of $1.0B goal Raised by 282,810 people in 9 days
If they get down to about 50% of the employees left all the unnecessary employees will be gone. Too bad we can’t keep it that way.
And my favorite:
"An end to the shutdown didn’t appear to be in sight Tuesday, as President Trump dug his heels in over the budget."
If only President Trump would give up on the cornerstone promise of his campaign and lose his base in the process, this could all end.
All AFGE members.
Cry me a river. Everyone involved should get a job...even the government “workers” who basically are useless. Also, no food for fatties.
Because they have to keep the people on that actually make the agency function.
Proof is required of this statement. Government employees routinely working holidays and weekends???
LOL. so, democrat voters are hardest hit?
That's right.
The welfare mutants and zombies are always waiting in the wings, in this sort of scenario, as the army of the Rats, to be used as leverage.
The enemy media will point the finger at Trump as the cause of rioting, starving mutants.
There in lies the conundrum for democrats and their shut down. These folks would never vote conservative or Republican both the federal employees or the food stamp recipients, so it’s a zero sum gain for Trump and chaos for democrats and the largesse of federal workers who risk being exposed as useless expensive dead wood.
All lies
The true stories are the taxpayers on the hook for these low lives.
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