What is the federal government shutdown about? What are its immediate effects and its potential long-term effects? How may it impact the UO?

UO faculty members weigh in (additional faculty responses will be added as they are submitted to AroundtheO):

No direct hits at the moment, but we're all very concerned about the final outcome. The laboratories that we interact with, including SLAC, Fermilab and Argonne, tend to have enough funding to keep going for about a month or so. If this thing extends longer than that, they will have to start furloughing people, and that will have a direct impact on our interactions with these national labs. There are prospects for problems. We're involved in a planning process for the future in high energy physics, called the P5 or the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel. Meetings over the next several months are being planned, so that we can get together and look at opportunities for the future. We do this about every five years. If the shutdown doesn't get resolved for a lengthy amount of time, this process could be impacted.

There is a growing list of important databases that are not available as a result of the shutdown. We initially assumed that they would be available – just not updated. We just learned that USGS has joined a long list of other agencies (Census Bureau, Bureau of Economic Analysis) no longer providing online access to their data and publications. PubMed Central, a key database maintained by the NIH, is still up, but is posting this notice:

Due to the lapse in government funding, the information on this web site may not be up-to-date, transactions submitted via the web site may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted.

The lack of current access to these important sources is a detriment to research, teaching and learning, and has an impact across many of the science and social science disciplines.

A protracted shutdown only creates another headwind to an economy still struggling to regain ground lost during the last recession. Moody's Analytics, for example, estimates that a month-long shutdown would cost the U.S. economy $55 billion. As a result, we will see only slower resolution of pressing problems such as the crisis in long-term unemployment or stagnant median income growth for households. Moreover, the possibility of default on U.S. debt payments threatens the stability of the financial system at its core and could trigger a crisis that leads to another recession, pushing the economy back deeper into the hole. No faction in Congress should find it acceptable to hold the American economy hostage like this for any reason.

The partial government shutdown will operate as a perverse fiscal policy, adding negative pressure to a tepid recovery. The reduction in government spending will directly and indirectly act to reduce GDP and employment in the US, with spillover effects on Europe and the rest of the world. Given the weakness of the recovery in the U.S., this is a dangerous “policy.” The chairman of the Federal Reserve has made it clear that there are some adverse fiscal shocks that it may not be possible to offset with monetary policy. A failure to increase the debt limit would additionally test those limits, because it would make conceivable the possibility of default on U.S. federal government obligations, and because default risk would lead to higher interest rates. Both the partial government shutdown, if it continues for a significant length of time, and a failure to increase the debt limit, would increase the probability that the U.S. economy returns to recession. The House of Representatives should immediately pass a “clean” continuing resolution, to end the partial shutdown, and vote a “no strings” increase in the debt limit.

Beyond the many canceled meetings, field trips and conference calls, and shuttered websites that are greatly slowing down our work, the largest impacts we are seeing are on our rural community partners.  Small businesses and nonprofits working closely with the federal land management agencies are being hit hard.  For example, one of our partner organizations had to lay off 20 workers because the Forest Service required them to stop work; cash flow issues may force them to lay off more if the shutdown goes much longer.  In a county of 13,000 people and roughly 13 percent unemployment, there is little hope of alternative employment at this time of year.  (Roughly, because current unemployment data aren’t available.) In October, even short delays in prescribed fire, forest restoration, and environmental assessment mean pushing work into spring or fall of next year.

I am appalled that the federal government has shut down. People are largely unaware of all the useful work done by federal workers. In my course, Cultural Resource Management (ANTH 449/549), our schedule has been disrupted by not having access to the statutory text of CRM laws and regulations from federal government websites. Over the years, so much useful information has been made available on government websites, and now these are inaccessible. And of course compliance with cultural resource protection laws is at a standstill, inconveniencing a wide range of development projects on federal lands or under federal permit. It is a very sad state of affairs.

We have seen shut downs before during times of divided government. But it has never coincided with a looming default on the federal debt. The partisan and ideological polarization that underpins this dangerous brinksmanship is also unprecedented during the past century. The architects of the Constitution designed our government to fragment power, but it is unlikely that they intended a passionate minority faction to use fiscal cliffs as a means of upending standing law or altering national policy commitments. The magnitude of public disapproval and who the public holds accountable will play an enormous role in how and when this battle is resolved. In the meantime, it is taking a heavy toll on the nutrition of poor families, Head Start classrooms, veterans and other ordinary citizens. This level of government dysfunction also bodes ill for action on crucial issues such as immigration, education, energy and the environment.