DHS budgetMost DHS employees would go on working even if budget is not approved
The critical responsibilities of many DHS components require approximately 200,000 of the agency’s 230,000 employees to continue working even if Congress fails to fund the agency, as most DHS employees perform work considered necessary to protect human life and property. Still, withholding funding for DHS could delay the department’s employees’ paychecks until the shutdown ends.
Should Congress fail to reach a consensus and pass a DHS funding bill by the 27 February deadline, the consequences could be dire, according to some lawmakers. “If this goes to shutdown,” Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) said, “this could close down ports up and down the East Coast, because if you don’t have a Coast Guard, you don’t have the ports. You don’t have the ports, you don’t have an economy.”
“There are ghoulish, grim predators out there who would love to kill us or do us harm,” added Mikulski, member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “We should not be dillydallying and playing parliamentary pingpong with national security.”
Conservatives lawmakers are not as worried. Not approving DHS’s $40 billion budget for some time “is obviously not the end of the world,” said Representative Matt Salmon (R-Arizona), noting that many agency employees would still report to work through a shutdown.
The Bipartisan Policy Center points out that during the fall 2013 government shutdown, when national parks and monuments closed for sixteen days, essential government functions remained in operation, though some had reduced staff. During that shutdown period, 85 percent of all DHS employees still had to work.
ABC News reports that the critical responsibilities of many DHS components require approximately 200,000 of the agency’s 230,000 employees to continue working even if Congress fails to fund the agency. Most DHS employees perform work considered necessary to protect human life and property. Moreover, “some agencies are funded by sources other than annual appropriated funds.” The Secret Service would continue to protect the president and other dignitaries, Transportation Security Administration agents would still report to their assigned stations, the Coast Guard would remain on patrol duty, and Customs and Border Protection agents would report to work. Still, withholding funding for DHS could delay the department’s employees’ paychecks until the shutdown ends, thereby demoralizing the workforce.
“A shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security in these times is frankly too bitter to contemplate, but we have to contemplate it,” DHS chief Jeh Johnson told reporters last week. “It is horribly unfair to ask people in the critical role of Homeland Security to come to work and not get paid because Congress can’t fund the department.”
Workers at agencies funded mostly by fees rather than congressional appropriations, would still continue their operations while receiving a paycheck. Employees of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, whose recent mandate by President Barack Obama’s executive orderis the primary reason for a potential shutdown, would continue to process applications from immigrants seeking U.S. visas and work eligibility. So while some Republicans threaten to shut down DHS as a way to defund Obama’s immigration initiatives, employees implementing those initiatives would still operate with little impact under a shutdown.
DHS employees in non-critical administrative roles, or positions related to “planning, research and development, policy functions, auditing, training and development, and legislative, regulatory, public affairs and intergovernmental affairs,” and those responsible for operating the E-verify system used by businesses to check the immigration status of new hires, could be asked not to report to work during a department shutdown.
