[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14-S18]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, we have witnessed over the last few
weeks an unprecedented effort to use a coercive tactic in order to
achieve a particular substantive result--in my judgment, a totally
irresponsible and outrageous tactic; and, this is, to hold Government
hostage by closing it down and, therefore, not only depriving the
Federal workers of the opportunity to
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render service but depriving the American people of the service which
they render. And I am going to develop here in a moment the impact this
is having in the private sector.
There is a tendency to think primarily about the Federal workers who
cannot come to work and cannot get paid. And that is true, and that is
creating a tremendous hardship and tremendous crisis in many, many
families all across the country. But a similar crisis is being created
in the private sector which interrelates with the Government in terms
of its economic activity.
The Government ought to be allowed to go about its normal activities
while this struggle and debate over a 7-year budget plan takes place.
There are very important fundamental differences over that budget plan.
Very deep cuts in Medicare are proposed by some. There is strong
resistance to that. At the same time, those who want the deep cuts in
Medicare want to give large tax breaks. A lot of people do not see the
sense in giving large tax breaks primarily at the upper end of the
income scale at the same time that you are going to be imposing cuts in
medical services on people with very modest means.
In all of this there is an effort in effect to create chaos, to hold
the Government hostage as a bargaining tactic; a coercive bargaining
tactic.
The majority leader yesterday here in the Senate, Senator Dole, when
we passed the clean continuing resolution which would allow the
Government to resume its normal activities for a temporary period of
time--workers would be back at work, they could do their job, people
could get services, workers would be paid--said, and I quote him:
``People have been gone from their jobs long enough. Enough is
enough.''
Today, the Washington Post in an editorial said, ``They ought to
reopen the closed agencies while they talk, since in fact they do
finally seem to be talking. It's a nasty game, the shutdown, and it's
gone on long enough.''
At the outset of that editorial the Washington Post said, and I quote
them:
Hostage-taking is an ugly business. It doesn't matter what
the cause. Innocent people are seized and used as pawns; they
become political trading stamps whose welfare is exchanged
for things the hostage-taker could not win by normal means.
That, even more than the mindlessness, the waste (in the
supposed cause of economy in government), the inconvenience
and the instances of outright harm to unpaid workers and
unserved citizens alike, is what is finally wrong with the
current government shutdown.
The basic issue raised is to what lengths will people go to try to
get their way?
It is the hallmark of a democracy that you have to accommodate
conflicting viewpoints. Democracy does not guarantee you that your way
is necessarily going to prevail. It gives you an opportunity to try to
persuade others.
We have a constitutional system of separation of powers and checks
and balances, and it requires restraint and good judgment on the part
of decision-makers not to sacrifice the means in order to gain their
particular end.
Now, we have a classic case of sacrificing the means, the proper
workings of democracy, in order to gain a particular substantive
result. It has never happened before. Never before has the closure of
the Government been used as a coercive tactic over substantive issues
about which there are very sharp differences. But it is happening in
this instance, and it is wreaking havoc.
I ask unanimous consent that this editorial from the Washington Post
be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 3, 1996]
The Government as Stage Prop
Hostage-taking is an ugly business. it doesn't matter what
the cause. Innocent people are seized and used as pawns; they
become political trading stamps whose welfare is exchanged
for things the hostage-taker could not win by normal means.
That, even more than the mindlessness, the waste (in the
supposed cause of economy in government), the inconvenience
and the instances of outright harm to unpaid workers and
unserved citizens alike, is what is finally wrong with the
current government shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole was trying again last night
to find the formula to reopen temporarily. Good for him; it's
the right position; and he takes it at a certain cost.
Speaker Newt Gingrich said it would be ``very hard'' to find
the necessary votes in the House without a budget agreement.
Does he really lack the power to produce such a limited
result? Sen. Phil Gramm, meanwhile, one of Sen. Dole's rivals
for the Republican presidential nomination, spoke for the
vaudeville wing of the party. He is one of those who, over
the years, have found it convenient to make almost a cartoon
of the federal government.
It's a straw-man style of politics. First you portray the
awful thing, then you run against it, and no matter if the
portrayal bears scant relation to the reality. ``I do think
we've discovered one thing,'' he said on television Sunday,
``and that is, Have you missed the government? I mean,
doesn't it strike you funny that 280,000 government employees
are furloughed, large segments of the government are shut
down? I think this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that we
need to go back and eliminate 150,000 to 200,000 bureaucratic
positions.'' Mr. Gramm and others thus use the government as
a stage prop. Rather than make the decisions they ought to be
making--ought in fact to have made weeks ago--both parties
are using it, or the lack of it, to score political points
and gain leverage in the underlying budget talks, even as
they also scramble to avoid the blame for the spectacle they
have jointly achieved. We have a suggestion for them. They
ought to reopen the closed agencies while they talk, since in
fact they do finally seem to be talking. It's a nasty game,
the shutdown, and it's gone on long enough.
Mr. SARBANES. I also ask unanimous consent that at the end of my
remarks three articles from the Post about the impact of this shutdown
also be printed in the Record.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, one article talking about the impact
across the Nation of the partial Government shutdown. Let me quote from
it:
Kansas stopped paying unemployment benefits yesterday, the
first time a State has turned away claims in the federal
program's 60-year history.
The Environmental Protection Agency sent home 2,400 of its
``Superfund'' workers and stopped toxic waste cleanup work at
609 sites across the Nation throwing hundreds of contract
employees out of work . . .
With the holiday season over, the impact of the partial
Government shutdown came into sharper focus as private sector
companies and State agencies struggled with the ripple
effects from Washington . . .
``We've never been through anything like this before,''
said Ronald Frank, Executive Vice President of Ecology and
Environment, a Superfund contractor based near Buffalo that
will furlough ``a couple hundred'' workers today. ``I don't
think this is the way the system ought to work.''
He is absolutely right, it is not the way the system ought to work.
Another private sector operator, ``Michael Tilchin, Director of
Superfund programs at CH2M Hill Ltd, said `hundreds of employees' would
be furloughed.''
His company is helping clean up an old manufacturing plant
in Hellertown, PA, where hazardous wastes have contaminated
the groundwater.
The job is 95 percent complete and may have an ``unintended
consequence,'' Tilchin said. ``In the event the shutdown
persists, the costs of shutting it down and restarting it may
be larger than the cost of completing the work.''
And another private sector businessman said: ``If they had their own
business, would they run that business this way?'' he asked, referring
to Congress. For the Government to have no plan to ensure that its
programs will continue operating, he said, ``seems kind of
ridiculous.''
It is ridiculous, and it is stupid and it is irrational, and it lacks
any common sense. It just shows the limits to which some are prepared
to go in terms of using coercive tactics in order to gain their way on
another issue. That is what is at work here.
Are you entitled to use any and all tactics, no matter how
disruptive, no matter how much chaos they create, no matter how much
injury they do, no matter how much harm they inflict on people in order
to gain your way?
That is not my understanding of how democracy works, and that is not
my understanding of how our constitutional system is supposed to work.
Every time there is a sharp disagreement, is the Government to be taken
hostage as a coercive tactic? In fact, we have a national policy of not
negotiating with hostage-takers. That is the position the United States
takes when it is confronted with this situation in the international
arena.
The ripple effect that is being felt throughout the economy is
extraordinary. ``Hundreds of companies whose
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Federal contracts were frozen when the furlough began * * * have either
sent employees home or may have to do so soon.''
These are not Federal employees. These are private sector employees.
The Federal employees, many of them, are coming into work, over
500,000, and not being paid. And I ask people to stop and think: How
long could they go without a paycheck?
Now, there is apparently a certain insensitivity in the Congress to
that, but it may just reflect the fact that many Members of the
Congress have significant economic means and the loss of a paycheck
would not impact upon them the way it does on ordinary citizens who
cannot go without a paycheck. They have mortgage payments to make; they
have car payments to make; they have school payments to make.
Beyond the Federal employees are all of the private sector employees
who are being impacted very sharply, and those employees, unlike
furloughed Federal workers who expect to be reimbursed eventually for
time off the job, most employees of Federal contractors and vendors
will not be paid retroactively.
Mr. President, the impact of this is reaching not only locally and
nationally, it is also reaching internationally. Visa applications by
foreigners to come to this country have come to a complete halt. There
are 20,000 to 30,000 applications made a day. Many of these people want
to come for business purposes, for tourism, which is, of course,
important to the functioning of our economy. We have just cut that off.
These visas are backed up. Americans are backed up now waiting for
passports. In many instances, people have forfeited payments for travel
arrangements.
With the action taken by the Senate yesterday we have the opportunity
to correct this situation. There is a clean resolution that has gone to
the House. I very much hope the House will pass it; that this exercise
in hostage-taking will come to a halt and the talks on the overall 7-
year plan can continue with their sharp differences, but this
irresponsible tactic, this impermissible tactic of coercion by closing
the Government down ought to come to a halt.
I yield the floor.
Exhibit 1
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 3, 1996]
Inconvenience Edges Toward Emergency
(By Thomas W. Lippman)
In Vietnam, the government has threatened to cut off
electricity to the U.S. Embassy because the $1,600 bill
hasn't been paid.
In Russia, U.S. diplomats took out an interest-free loan
from the Moscow embassy's community association to cover the
payroll for Russian employees.
In Cuba, the trucker who hauls drinking water to the U.S.
interests section has refused to make any more deliveries
until paid.
Between 20,000 and 30,000 applications by foreigners for
visas to come to this country are going unprocessed each day,
creating a huge backlog of paperwork and infuriating
prospective visitors. And in this country, more than 200,000
Americans are waiting for passports that cannot be issued.
Such is life in the State Department in the third week of a
partial government shutdown that has cut off the department's
money and blocked almost all nonemergency spending. Senior
officials yesterday described a mounting sense of crisis as
undone paperwork piles up, the backlog of unprocessed visa
and passport applications grows, travel plans are canceled
and embassy officials scramble for funds to pay restive local
employees.
``We just don't have any cash,'' said Richard M. Moose,
undersecretary of state for management. As long as suppliers
and contractors are willing to extend credit for the few
expenditures authorized, the State Department can get by,
Moose said. But in the many parts of the world where the
department has to lay out cash as services are provided--
including several countries where security companies demand
payment up front to provide guards--the current mass
inconvenience is about to become an emergency, Moose and
other officials said.
People around the world may find it hard to believe that
the United States could be reduced to the level of ``banana
republic,'' Moose said, but ``my threshold of believing what
can't happen is getting lower all the time.''
State is one of nine Cabinet departments and assorted
independent agencies whose fiscal 1996 appropriations bills
have not been signed into law by President Clinton and thus
are mostly shut down because of the budget impasse between
Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress. State, more
than any other agency, has spread the impact of the shutdown
around the world.
Among those who have felt it are students who planned to
start classes this month in foreign universities, vacationers
who had firm travel plans and nonrefundable tickets, and
people with job offers from employers overseas.
``We had an 84-year-old woman who wanted a passport to go
to Rome because her bishop was being elevated to cardinal''
in the Roman Catholic church, a State Department consular
official said. ``We had to say no because it wasn't an
emergency.''
In many foreign countries, according to Moose and other
officials, local laws do not permit the furloughing of local
employees. As a result, ``we have to let them come to work,
but we can't pay them.'' Worse than that, other officials
said, is the fact that visa applicants can see all these
furlough-proof local employees at their desks, but are unable
to obtain any service because the workers are not permitted
to do anything.
``All this is unprecedented. We hope for a solution soon.
Otherwise things will just get worse and worse,'' said Pamela
Harriman, U.S. ambassador to France.
State Department and Office of Management and Budget
officials said the cutoff of visas and passports has cut into
airline revenue at a peak travel season because tens of
thousands or even hundreds of thousands of prospective
travelers had to stay home. Airline industry spokesmen,
however, said they have so far noticed little impact.
Some of the impact of the shutdown is more embarrassing
than substantive. Harriman and all other ambassadors, for
example, have been told they cannot spend money on what is
known as ``representation,'' which mostly means
entertainment. No luncheons for visiting business executives,
no cocktail parties for important locals, no travel to
ribbon-cutting and statue dedications.
The shutdown also is undermining morale in the ranks as
leaves and long-planned transfers are canceled and work that
is being done goes unrewarded, senior officials said.
In Colombia, for example, U.S. consular officials who
worked all last week to help families of the victims of an
American Airlines crash were treated as ``volunteers''
because there is no money to pay them.
In Washington, newly appointed foreign service officers are
planning to meet tonight to commiserate over cancellation of
their first deployments.
And morale among State Department and U.S. Information
Agency employees at overseas posts is likely to fall further
on the next scheduled payday, officials said, because their
colleagues from funded agencies, such as Defense and
Agriculture, get full paychecks but they do not.
Those concerns, however, pale before impending crises in
security and communications, officials said.
``I don't think the system can tolerate this for many more
days,'' said OMB Deputy Director John Koskinen, noting that
local personnel in many foreign countries ``live paycheck to
paycheck. That raises a serious problem for us because a
number of those people provide security.''
``The places that really worry us are the ones where the
FSNs [foreign service nationals, or local employees] are at
the lower end of the pay scale anyway,'' Moose said, citing
Cairo, New Delhi and Moscow as examples. He said in many
embassies funds used for recreation or commissaries are being
tapped to cover the payroll shortfall.
In embassies that have U.S. Marine guards, Moose said, the
State Department is responsible for paying for the Marines'
food but no longer has the funds to do so. ``Maybe we can get
the Corps to carry us on the cuff. It doesn't do a lot for
our image,'' he said.
As if to underline his point about image, the U.S. Embassy
in Mexico City, where the shutdown has been front-page news,
sought to allay fears about the solvency of the government in
Washington.
``The embassy wishes to make it clear that this situation
arises from the constitutional definitions of how the United
States budget is passed into law and does not represent any
fundamental inability of the United States of America to pay
its bills,'' the statement said.
On Saturday, Moose said, the State Department will run out
of money to pay the contractors who run its worldwide
communications network. Diplomatic cables, e-mail and secure
telephones--the lifeblood of diplomatic communication--could
be truncated or cut off, he said.
The restriction on all but emergency travel will not block
Secretary of State Warren Christopher and a sizable entourage
from flying this weekend to Paris and the Middle East,
officials said. One reason is that Christopher travels on an
Air Force plane, and the State Department's credit is good
with the Air Force.
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 3. 1996]
______
Ripple Effect Could Leave Area Reeling
(By Peter Behr)
On a normal day, Duke Chung's Manhattan Bagel shop would
serve more than 1,500 bagels to employees of the National
Science Foundation and nearby contractors in Ballston. Now he
feels like the hole, not the dough.
``Today, it was a little over 200,'' said Chung; who
operates the bagel franchise on NSF's ground floor. The
building, usually filled with 1,400 workers is closed except
for several dozen supervisors, security and custodial
workers, he said. ``I used to have 13 employees. Now I have
about three. Merry Christmas.''
As the partial federal shutdown enters its third week, the
economic damage has begun to spread into many corners of the
Washington area, from people who run government
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computers to those who supply its desks and bake its morning bagels.
Hundreds of local companies whose federal contracts were
frozen when the furlough began Dec. 16 have either sent
employee home or may have to do so soon, officials said.
``In the local area there have to be thousand of
[contractor] employees who aren't working. It's of that
order,'' said Edward H. Bersoff, chairman of BTG Inc., a
Vienna information technology company. Bersoff also chairs
the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce.
If it continues, the shutdown could soon threaten the
entire region's economy, first through the direct impact of
federal furloughs and private-sector layoffs and then through
the secondary, ripple effects from loss of local wages,
economists said. The shutdown may ``feed on itself,'' said
Russel C. Deemer, regional economist with Crestar Bank in
Richmond.
Unlike furloughed federal workers, who expect to be
reimbursed eventually for time off the job, most employees of
federal contractors and vendors will not be paid
retroactively.
Companies that avoided layoffs by requiring employees to
use vacation and comp days over the period from Christmas to
New Year's Day are running out of time, said Olga Grkavac,
vice president of the International Technology Association of
America in Arlington, which represents about 150 area
technology companies.
``Unless something is resolved quickly, we'll see more
layoffs,'' she said.
There are no estimates of how many contractors' employees
have been sent home-federal departments and agencies whose
budgets have not yet been approved provided about one-fourth
of the nearly $18 billion in contracts that went to area
firms in 1994.
But ``we are starting to see some pretty significant
impacts,'' said John F. Dealy, a Washington attorney and
business consultant who advises technology companies. The
contractors ``aren't able to continue working on projects so
they have to lay people off. That's accelerating.''
BTG's Bersoff said he knows of companies that are preparing
to cut off or curtail medical coverage for laid-off workers.
``There are second- and third-tier effects of all kinds,'' he
said.
The blow already has fallen on hundreds of merchants and
suppliers who depend on federal workers and contractors for
their business.
Mark Herman, who manages the Au Bon Pain restaurant at
Union Station, said he has seen a sharp falloff in breakfast
and lunch business since the Bureau of Labor Statistics
office across the street shut down two weeks ago.
Until Dec. 16, Christine Webb, a computer systems developer
with a Labor Department contractor, worked at keeping the BLS
computers going and bought her lunch at Herman's counter.
Now, she's home and preparing to file for unemployment
benefits.
Soon, some of Herman's employees who have been using up
vacation and sick leave will face layoffs too, he said.
Moreover, he has no idea how many croissants and sandwich
fillings to order for the days ahead. ``It's just totally
confusing. It's just nuts.''
Others describe a chain reaction of disruption.
Richard A. Morsell, president of Office Furniture Concepts/
Federal Supply Contracts Group Inc. in Chantilly, ships desks
and chairs to federal offices around the nation. In the past
week, some of those shipments have gone into limbo because
the federal doors are closed. ``This stuff is floating all
over the country,'' he said.
He said he is out several hundred thousand dollars in
shipments on which the government has not made payment and he
intends to see that the bills are paid, with interest. But
who knows where the invoices are? Somewhere in the mountains
of unprocessed paperwork in federal mail rooms, he said.
``I'm going to have to wait a . . . long time while they work
through that paperwork and get to us,'' he said.
Meantime, his staff has shrunk from 19 to 11 since
government purchases began to slow last summer, he said.
``It's utterly stupid.''
The long-term consequences of the upheaval may hurt local
federal contractors for months to come, according to
executives such as J.P. ``Jack'' London, chairman of CACI
International Inc., an Arlington-based information technology
company.
The next batch of contracts his company would compete for
may well be delayed by the shutdown. ``It takes people to put
those out,'' London said.
____
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 3, 1996]
Jobless Aid, Toxic Waste Cleanup Halt
(By Stephen Barr and Frank Swoboda)
Kansas stopped paying unemployment benefits yesterday, the
first time a state has turned away claims in the federal
program's 60-year history.
The Environmental Protection Agency sent home 2,400 of its
``Superfund'' workers and stopped toxic waste cleanup work at
609 sites across the nation, throwing hundreds of contract
employees out of work.
Eleven companies, including Blue Cross, are using $5
million to $6 million a day of their own money, rather than
the government's, to process Medicare claims and pay their
employees.
With the holiday season over, the impact of the partial
government shutdown came into sharper focus as private sector
companies and state agencies struggled with the ripple
effects from Washington. It also generated more disgust with
Washington's ways.
``We've never been through anything like this before,''
said Ronald Frank, executive vice president of Ecology and
Environment, a Superfund contractor based near Buffalo that
will furlough a ``couple hundred'' workers today. ``I don't
think this is the way the system ought to work.''
Stephen Crickmore, the president of AdminiStar Federal in
Indianapolis, administers Medicare claims for the government.
He has been paying 650 employees out of company reserves
since the shutdown started on Dec. 16.
``If they had their own business, would they run that
business this way?'' he asked, referring to Congress. For the
government to have no plan to ensure that its programs will
continue operating, he said, ``seems kind of ridiculous.''
His company, Crickmore said, is ``looking at how long we're
going to continue what we're doing at this point, which is
subsidizing the federal government.'' Early next week, he
said, the company will have to decide whether to furlough
employees.
Other companies, however, have started sending workers
home. EPA contractors across the country received ``stop
work'' orders yesterday, the first wave of several that could
jeopardize the jobs of up to 10,000 Superfund workers.
In Houston, Peter Arrowsmith, president of NUS, a Superfund
contractor, said his company had started laying off employees
and would soon have 125 employees, 15 percent of his work
force, sent home without pay.
Michael Tilchin, director of Superfund programs at CH2M
Hill Ltd., said ``hundreds of employees'' would be
furloughed. His company is helping clean up an old
manufacturing plant in Hellertown, Pa., where hazardous
wastes have contaminated the ground water.
The job is 95 percent complete and may have an ``unintended
consequence,'' Tilchin said. ``In the event the shutdown
persists, the costs of shutting it down and restarting it may
be larger than the cost of completing the work,'' he said.
Like the other EPA contractors, Frank said his New York-
based company would furlough ``a couple hundred'' workers
today unless the White House and Congress agreed to end the
shutdown.
Administration officials, such as Labor Secretary Robert B.
Reich and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E.
Shalala, have said repeatedly that the shutdown would disrupt
services to a wide range of Americans, not just federal
employees. But Republicans, such as Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.),
have argued that, if anything, the shutdown would show what
little role the government plays in the lives of ordinary
citizens. Republicans point out that the agencies now closed
kept about 480,000 employees on the job to provide services
while sending a smaller number--280,000--home.
Yesterday, Reich pointed to the closure of the Kansas
unemployment offices as an example of the shutdown's fallout,
saying, ``The people who have lost their jobs in Kansas this
week are simply out of luck.''
The Labor Department estimated there are between 1,900 and
2,600 new claims for unemployment benefits in Kansas each
week. Wayne Franklin, state secretary of human resources in
Topeka, said the state did not have the $60,000 a day to keep
the unemployment benefits offices open.
Kansas has plenty of money in the unemployment insurance
trust fund to pay the benefit claims, but it relies on the
federal government to pay the cost of administering the
program.
At least 10 other states and the District of Columbia also
have exhausted federal funds to administer their unemployment
insurance programs, Reich said. District officials said
yesterday that 40,000 furloughed federal employees have filed
unemployment claims related to the current shutdown. The
city, which usually pays about 35,000 claims a year, could
issue its first shutdown checks next week.
Reich said officials do not know how long the District
offices can stay open. New Mexico, which has a relatively
large federal population, also has run out of federal money.
``It is an open question whether they'll be able to continue
at all,'' Reich said.
Alaska will try to stay open until Saturday, while Alabama
is also using state money to finance the unemployment program
through Friday.
In Little Rock, officials with the Arkansas Rehabilitation
Services virtually disbanded their state agency for the
disabled because the federal money has stopped coming from
Washington.
Commissioner Bobby Simpson said he had to furlough 495 of
the agency's 603 employees, meaning that 17,000 Arkansas
residents with physical and mental disabilities will have no
office to turn to for help with job training, special
vehicles for commuting to work, and other services. The state
rehabilitation office, which has an annual budget of $38
million, receives 76 percent of its funding from the federal
government.
``It's ironic because we're in the business of putting
people to work, of helping to turn tax users into
taxpayers,'' Simpson said. ``We held on as long as we could.
. . .''
Despite the problems in some states, reports yesterday by
Washington Post correspondents showed that other states were
[[Page S18]]
coping with the shutdown, keeping their services available even when
faced with lapses in federal funding.
Michigan, for example, has been using its own revenue to
make up for the cutoff of federal funds in crucial programs
such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)
and Medicaid, said John Truscott, a spokesman for Gov.
John Engler (R). ``We can't fund them forever, but for the
next couple of weeks we're okay,'' Truscott said.
Wisconsin is preparing to use more of its own funds for
those two major programs this week but is counting on an
eventual reimbursement from the federal government, said
James R. Klauser, the state's secretary of administration. He
said AFDC and Medicaid payments range between $25 million and
$40 million a week in Wisconsin. ``We look at it every
week,'' he said. ``We're comfortable right now.''
California is losing more than $5 million a day in tourism
revenue. Officials of Mariposa County, the home of Yosemite
National Park, asked Gov. Pete Wilson (R) to declare the
county an economic disaster zone, but Wilson turned down the
request, saying it exceeded the scope of his authority.
The shutdown also cut into the pensions of about 150,000
retired railroad workers. The retirees, most over 70 years of
age, receive a portion of their pension from appropriated
funds and the rest from a retirement trust fund. They will
lose about two-thirds of an average $130 monthly payment that
is paid directly from the treasury; the rest of their annuity
from the railroad trust fund will not be reduced.
Federal agencies, meanwhile, continue to struggle to
provide services.
Only two of the 15 employees that the Department of Housing
and Urban Development has in Flint, Mich., for example, have
been allowed to report to work during the shutdown. That has
forced the office to delay opening any bids from families or
real estate agents for HUD property. Also, none of the
roughly 500 families who have home-purchase loans through the
field office have been able to get any help, especially those
who are drifting further into delinquency.
``The sense of emergency is much higher now than before,''
HUD coordinator Gary LeVine said. ``The three-day shutdown
before wasn't so bad. Three weeks is. This is no way to treat
the public.''
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
____________________