DC feels sting of gov’t shutdown
WASHINGTON-AREA residents and elected officials tried to prepare on Friday for the effects of a federal government shutdown, a familiar possibility that keeps thousands of residents from being paid, costs contractors serious money and leaves restaurants and businesses with far fewer customers.
There are about 283,500 federal employees in the Washington region, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The potential loss in economic activity adds up to about $150 million per day, said Terry Clower, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis.
“That’s a big thing,” Clower said. “Do you recapture some of that down the road? Maybe. But it gives you an order of magnitude of what’s happening day to day.”
Prince George’s County (Maryland) resident Wanda McClary said she has been pulling as many extra shifts as she can as a security guard at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, knowing that a shutdown means the museum could close and the 52-year-old and her colleagues would face their own financial shortfall.
“We have no idea what will happen,” said McClary. “The only thing that saves me is that I love what I do.”
With funds already tight in a local economy hampered by $13 billion in federal cuts since 2013, many local and state officials expressed anger at the current budget impasse in Congress that, for their governments, either means shutting down programs that rely on federal dollars or footing the bill to keep them open.
“Marylanders are sick and tired of Washington’s dysfunctional blame games,” Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, said in a statement, echoing – but in a bipartisan way – Democrats in the state legislature who earlier in the week sent a letter to President Donald Trump and GOP leaders in Congress declaring: “Enough is Enough.”
“Let me be very clear to everyone in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats – stop the finger-pointing and do your jobs,” Hogan said.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, said even the talk of a shutdown is causing too much instability in the region.
“I just don’t think there’s any excuse,” Northam said on Friday afternoon. “It bothers me not only as the governor of Virginia but also as a business person.”
Short-term fixes, he said, such as a 30-day continuing resolution are “just unacceptable”.
In 2013, when the government shut down for 16 days, several thousand federal employees in the Washington area were furloughed. In addition, dozens of government contractors laid off employees after the subsequent cuts in federal spending that meant scaling down or killing some projects.
That translated into less disposable income for the region as a whole, leaving restaurants, shopping malls and other businesses with lower profits and sending fewer tax dollars into local government coffers for schools and other services.
“More than anything, the uncertainty and the confusion that results from a shutdown is something we just don’t need,” said Sharon Bulova, chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (Virginia). “We’ve had enough uncertainty and difficulty with the federal government’s cutting back on contracting and cutting back on federal spending, and this on top of it is not good for our local government’s well being.”
District officials projected a cost to the city of about $100,000 per week as DC workers step in to pick up the trash at about 126 National Park service sites and, potentially, maintain roads that are normally taken care of by the federal government, like Beach Drive.
“I want to be perfectly clear that Washington, DC, is open,” Mayor Muriel Bowser, said during a news conference on the National Mall.
“DC government will continue to provide services to our residents, the services that they expect and deserve, uninterrupted,” she said, adding that her administration expects to be reimbursed by the federal government for whatever costs it incurs.
Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker III, said he will take steps similar to what he did during the last shutdown, such as placing the Department of Housing on high alert to identify households that may not be able to pay their mortgages or rent.
“A shutdown impacts us greater than any other place in the region,” Baker said. The county is home to 75,000 federal workers, 27,000 federal jobs and hundreds of small and mediumsize businesses that rely on the federal government for contract work. In many families, both parents work for the government and are on the higher end of the pay scale.
Dana Kegler, a management program analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, said she was upset about the possibility of a shutdown because political theatrics are threatening “people’s livelihoods”.
“It’s a showdown, and what’s at stake is folks who could be out of work,” she said. “It’s a cat-and-mouse game that isn’t cool.”