The Consequences of Budgetary Deadlock

By George A. Warner

OMB Watch today highlights two news reports that confirm what many federal managers already knew: The current budgetary impasse in Congress has serious consequences. At Reuters, correspondent Andy Sullivan chronicled its effects on agencies, federal contractors and the public.

Sullivan noted that an air traffic control tower in State College, Pa., completed in Nov. 2010 at a cost of $7 million, sits empty due to a lack of funds to operate it.

On the other hand, the deadlock requires agencies to spend some funds they'd rather obligate elsewhere. For example, Sullivan wrote, the continuing resolution "commits NASA to continue funding a moon exploration program that Obama and legislators already agreed to cancel. Meanwhile, NASA has not been able to start work on a heavy-lift rocket needed to carry people and cargo to destinations beyond the space station's 220-mile-high (354 km high) orbit."

In a report earlier this week, The New York Times' Robert Pear documented how local areas have been affected by budgetary uncertainty. "For some Head Start programs around the country," he wrote, "federal officials are renewing grants at 60 percent of last year's levels. Local Head Start managers say parents, unsure of the whether there will continue to be space for their children, are trying to arrange alternative child care for preschoolers."

In Berlin, N.H., a $276 million federal prison remains unopened because officials are waiting for the funds to hire staff to operate it. "The federal Bureau of Prisons is spending $4 million a year to maintain an empty building," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., told the Times.