Effects of shutdown softened for some

WASHINGTON — The government shutdown is wreaking havoc on many Americans. But if you’re a sportsman looking to hunt game, a natural-gas company planning to drill offshore, or a taxpayer awaiting your refund , you’re in luck: This shutdown won’t affect your plans.

All administrations get some leeway to choose which services to freeze and which to maintain when a budget standoff in Washington forces some agencies to shutter. But in the selective reopening of offices, experts say they see a willingness to cut corners, scrap prior plans and wade into legally dubious territory to mitigate the pain. Some noted that the choices seem targeted at shielding the Republican-leaning voters whom Trump and his party need to stick with them.

The cumulative effect is a government shutdown — now officially the longest in U.S. history — that some Americans might find financially destabilizing and others might hardly notice.

Russell T. Vought, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the overarching message from Trump has been “to make this shutdown as painless as possible, consistent with the law.”

“We have built on past efforts within this administration not to have the shutdown be used to be weaponized against the American people,” he said.

Others say such a strategy suggests a lack of urgency and a willingness to let the political impasse in Washington drag on indefinitely.

“The strategy seems to be to keep the shutdown in place, not worry about the effect on employees and furloughed people and contractors, but where the public might be annoyed, give a little,” said Alice Rivlin, who led OMB during a 21-day shutdown in 1996, which had been the longest in history.

“We weren’t trying to make it better. We were trying to emphasize the pain so it would be over,” she said. “We wanted it to end. I’m not convinced the Trump administration does.”

The Trump administration last week announced that the IRS will issue tax refunds during the shutdown, circumventing a 2011 decision barring the agency from distributing refunds until the Treasury Department is funded. The National Treasury Employees Union filed a lawsuit, arguing that its workers are being unconstitutionally forced to return to work without pay.

Some agencies are finding creative ways to fund services they want to restore.

The administration has emphasized continued use of public lands in general, and particularly for hunters and oil and gas developers, angering environmental groups. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, using funds leftover from 2018, announced last week that it will direct dozens of wildlife refuges to return employees to work, ensuring that planned activities on those lands, including organized hunts, continue.

Barbara Wainman, a spokeswoman for the agency, said most refuges have remained accessible to hunters throughout the shutdown, and the decision to staff them was made based on three criteria: resource management, high visitation and previously scheduled programming, which includes organized hunts and school field trips. Wainman said 17 of the 38 refuges have scheduled hunts that would have been canceled without the restaffing effort.

Despite the shutdown, the Bureau of Land Management is continuing work related to drilling efforts in Alaska.

And the IRS is turning to user fees to bring back clerks to restore the incomeverification program, which mortgage lenders need to confirm the income of a borrower. Suspension of the program threatened to bring the mortgage industry to a halt.

Robert Broeksmit, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said he lobbied a top Treasury official, asking of the clerks: “Could you make these guys essential?”

The focus on services that reach rural voters, influential industries and voters’ pocketbooks is intended to protect Republicans from blowback, said Barry Anderson, who served as assistant director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1988 to 1998. During the 1996 shutdown, Anderson said, he and others met each day to review which offices and services should be deemed essential. He said tax refunds never made the cut.

“This,” he said, “is to keep Republican senators’ phones silent.”

Information from The Washington Post was included in this story.