The Defense Department has received guidance from the Office of Management and Budget to “review and update our plan” to prepare for a government shutdown, Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters yesterday.
A memo approved by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter does not include many specific details about how to proceed if a shutdown occurs, but it gets the ball rolling on determining those details, including who would be exempt versus non-exempt during a shutdown, Little said.
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| Pentagon officials have been instructed to begin planning for a government shutdown next week. Photo courtesy |
All employees, both military and civilian, would be required to show up for work on the morning of Oct. 1, even if Congress cannot pass a bill funding government operations in time for the start of the new fiscal year. Military personnel would be required to work through the shutdown. Civilian personnel would be told that morning whether they are exempted and therefore must work through the shutdown, or whether they are not exempted and therefore will be sent home until a funding bill is passed.
“If there is a government shutdown, a lapse in appropriations would mean that DoD civilian personnel would not be automatically entitled to retroactive pay and that a subsequent act by Congress would need to restore that pay. That would be a legislative fix, as I understand it,” Little said.
Military personnel would be paid retroactively, though it is unclear when exactly they would be paid, he added.
“We’re going to continue the war effort” regardless of funding, Little made clear, though he added that a lapse in funding is harmful to the department and its operations.
Little noted that the government has had to plan for shutdowns many times recently but hasn’t actually executed those plans since the last shutdown in 1996, so it will take several days before all the details of a shutdown become clear.
The House passed a continuing resolution on Sept. 20 that funds the government through Dec. 15 at FY ’13 levels–though it also includes measures to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The Senate began working through a lengthy procedural process Monday to bring the bill up for a vote, where it will almost certainly be amended to strip out the language dealing with health care funding. The timing of the Senate’s work could put the amended bill back on the House floor with just one day to avert a government shutdown.