[Congressional Bills 113th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 724 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

113th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                 S. 724

 To provide flexibility to agencies on determining what employees are 
           essential personnel in implementing the sequester.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             April 15, 2013

Mr. Blunt (for himself, Mr. Risch, Mr. Hoeven, Mr. Wicker, Mr. Johanns, 
   Mr. Enzi, Mrs. Fischer, Ms. Collins, Mr. Inhofe, and Mr. Boozman) 
introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the 
        Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To provide flexibility to agencies on determining what employees are 
           essential personnel in implementing the sequester.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Essential Services Act of 2013''.

SEC. 2. DEFINITIONS.

    In this Act--
            (1) the term ``agency'' means an Executive agency (as 
        defined in section 105 of title 5, United States Code); and
            (2) the term ``essential employee'' means an employee that 
        performs work involving the safety of human life or the 
        protection of property, as determined by the head of the 
        agency.

SEC. 3. FURLOUGH FLEXIBILITY.

    (a) In General.--In implementing the sequester required by section 
251A of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, 
as ordered on March 1, 2013, the head of an agency may furlough such 
employees of the agency as are required to achieve the funding 
reduction required by the sequester for the agency, but shall exempt 
essential employees.
    (b) Transfer of Budgetary Resources.--The head of an agency may 
transfer budgetary resources within their agency to carry out 
subsection (a), subject to the limitation that transfers may only be 
made to maintain essential employees.
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