By ROBERT PEAR
Published: March 14, 2011
WASHINGTON — Unsure from week to week how much money Congress will provide them as the two parties battle over the budget for the rest of this year, federal officials say many agencies have been operating in chaos, confusion and uncertainty.
Jim Cole/Associated Press
A new federal prison in Berlin, N.H., is ready to be occupied, but it remains empty because officials lack the financing to hire staff.
Related
Conservatives Balk at Stopgap Spending Measure (March 15, 2011)
Times Topic: U.S. Federal Budget
Officials at various agencies have frozen hiring, canceled projects, delayed contracts, reduced grants and curtailed training, travel and upgrades in information technology.
In northern New Hampshire, a new federal prison, with space for 1,280 inmates, sits vacant because the federal government has not been able to hire correctional officers and other employees.
For some Head Start programs around the country, 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.
Michael J. Astrue, the commissioner of Social Security, said the agency had cut back distribution of annual earnings and benefit statements and had suspended plans to open eight hearing offices that would tackle a huge backlog of appeals by people seeking disability benefits.
Like most of the government, the Social Security Administration has been financed for more than five months with short-term spending bills known as continuing resolutions. Congress is expected to pass another three-week spending bill this week that will continue to pare back financing from last year’s level.
“Because of the uncertainty of our budget,” Mr. Astrue said, “I have had to make choices that will begin to erode service.”
The Federal Transit Administration is parceling out grants in proportion to the time covered by stopgap spending bills.
Jacob Snow, general manager of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, in Las Vegas, said his agency had received 40 percent of its usual federal grant — $10 million, rather than $25 million. As a result, he said, the agency has deferred purchases of buses and a security system for bus terminals, as well as construction of a new park-and-ride lot.
Budgetary uncertainty has caused the Defense Department to delay equipment repairs, the construction of a new Virginia-class submarine, the purchase of Chinook helicopters and the rebuilding of war-damaged Humvees. The Army has temporarily stopped some work on the Stryker Mobile Gun System, an armored fighting vehicle.
The Army and the Marine Corps have imposed a freeze on the hiring of civilian employees, who perform myriad duties, including payroll, security and air traffic control.
“The continuing resolution represents a crisis at our doorstep,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said. One result, he said, is “inefficient, start-and-stop management” of the armed forces, with greater use of one- and two-month contracts, which are inherently inefficient.
Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said the repeated use of stopgap spending bills not only hurt military readiness, but also imperiled jobs at shipyards, factories and military installations.
The budget impasse has stalled contracts for companies like NitroSecurity, a cybersecurity concern that does work for the Defense Department, NASA and the Food and Drug Administration.
“We have been selected for additional contracts, but the money is in limbo because of the continuing resolution,” said Kenneth R. Levine, the chief executive of NitroSecurity.
The federal fiscal year begins Oct. 1, and Congress is supposed to pass annual appropriations bills before that date but often misses the deadline for one or more agencies. To fill the gap, Congress typically passes bills that allow agencies to continue spending temporarily at last year’s rates, with some adjustments.
For the current fiscal year, Congress has passed five stopgap spending bills that cover consecutive intervals of two months, two weeks, three days, 10 weeks and two weeks. The most recent one expires Friday. The next one will probably run for three weeks, during which Congressional leaders and President Obama hope to negotiate a broad agreement on spending, though they remain far apart.
Elizabeth M. Robinson, the chief financial officer at NASA, said: “Most agencies have pushed the renewal of major contracts into the winter and spring. Uncertainty has slowed down our spending. That uncertainty takes a toll.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission has been particularly hard hit. It is operating at 2010 spending levels, which were fixed before Congress vastly expanded its duties under a law signed last July.
Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts and a co-author of the new law, said the spending constraints were “a deliberate and dangerous effort to frustrate increased regulation of the financial industry,” including hedge funds and derivatives.
Mary L. Schapiro, chairwoman of the commission, said the agency had curtailed travel by investigators and delayed work on a major information technology project that would help officials sift through tens of thousands of complaints and tips on securities law violations.
Paul G. Pittman Jr., executive director of the Head Start program in Hagerstown, Md., and Leah A. Pigatti, who runs the Head Start program in Detroit Lakes, Minn., said their federal grants had just been renewed at 60 percent of last year’s levels.
“We don’t know what our financial future is beyond the next couple of months,” Mr. Pittman said. “You can’t enter into a lease for the next school year because you don’t know if you will have the money. Working parents ask me: ‘Will you be there in 30 days? Should I be looking for other child care?’ ”
Ms. Pigatti, whose program serves 450 children from low-income families, said the latest grant award was highly unusual. “I’ve been in this business for more than 30 years,” Ms. Pigatti said, “and I have never received a grant award with such limitations.”
The National Institutes of Health has notified biomedical researchers that they will receive less money than previously promised, at least until Congress approves a final appropriations bill.
“Investigators are sitting on their hands, not knowing how much they will receive,” said Dr. Michael A. Caligiuri, director of the comprehensive cancer center at Ohio State University and president of the Association of American Cancer Institutes.
Farmers are also affected. The Farm Service Agency, a unit of the Agriculture Department that makes farm loans and disaster payments, has imposed a hiring freeze and curtailed overtime. The agency normally hires seasonal workers at this time of year, when large numbers of farmers and ranchers sign up for its programs.
The new federal prison in Berlin, N.H., is another symbol of the government’s predicament.
Pamela E. Laflamme, the city planner for Berlin, said: “The prison is fully constructed and ready to be occupied. The warden has been hired and is in the community. Federal officials are waiting for a budget to be passed before they can hire operating staff.”
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, expressed disbelief. “We now have a state-of-the-art, $276 million prison that is sitting vacant,” Ms. Shaheen said. “The federal Bureau of Prisons is spending $4 million a year to maintain an empty building.”
No comments:
Post a Comment