Grand Strategy for a Divided America

[Rifleman62]

I agree with ERC that the larger problem is the upcoming debt ceiling debate, but you cannot under estimate the impact to the economy of a shutdown that extends out beyond the end of the week. Government workers that were hit by furlough days under the sequester are being hit again. The loss of revenue to the local service businesses (restaurants, local shops, daycares, even transit systems) will be substantial. Just because the government is shut down and the paycheck stops, the bills are still coming, mortgages still need to be paid, and so on.

My understanding is that these 800,000 public employees, full/part time and contract are on a paid furlough. When funding is approved, they all get back pay.

T6:

I think the House is being reasonable in trying to push ACA back a year.The President probably overstepped his authority in postponing the employer mandate a year.Might as well be fair and do the same for the individual mandate.The computer network isn't ready yet.The government had enough time to set it up,but its still not fully ready.The Administration wouldn't budge on implementing ACA and knew there would be a shutdown.Their calculation is that a shutdown is bad for the GOP.We shall see how it pans out. The public expects a compromise but a large segment of the public is against the ACA.The ACA is supposed to deliver affordable insurance,but the premiums I have seen even with a subsidy don't look affordable.

President Obama has amended "the law of the land" some seventeen times including:
- (as above) exempting employers and unions as well as other groups. Why shouldn't individuals be exempted for a year?
_ subsidizing all members of the White House staff, members of the House and Senate and all their staffs to the tune of approximately 75% of their premiums. Why shouldn't elected members suffer/gain (your POV) the same as all citizens?

I can see that the computer programs will have glitches even if they had three years to get ready. Look at the CF's record.

I don't know how the approx 30M  people without health insurance now will be able to pay the cost of their ACA premiums. How will the vote go for the Democrats when their young generation base realize that they must pay for the at risk older generation? If they don't enroll and pay, then the IRS will fine. They can stay on Mommy and Daddy's  plan until age 26.

American Airlines and Caterpillar estimate increased costs of $100M. Who do you think is going to pay for that? Work 40 hrs per week? Not now . Many employers  i.e. Home depot slashing hours to get under the 30 hr mandatory.

It's a mess, but the President is leaving on a junket to two "important" potential trading partners, Indonesia  and Brunei but cancelled Malaysia and the Philippines .

I think the GOP will come out of this better. These 3/4 years are about President Obama's legacy. He does not want his signature legislation to fail, and he does not want to be the first POTUS to default. BUT, "I won" attitude is in the way.

Last but not least, Iran will get the bomb, as they are good guys after all and Bush was wrong again, then use it or have a surrogate
use it. Israel will retaliate.

 

[cupper]

My understanding is that these 800,000 public employees, full/part time and contract are on a paid furlough. When funding is approved, they all get back pay.

Not all are on paid furlough, and even those that are could be waiting months for back pay.

Which again goes to the point that the bills are still coming in, and need to be paid now.

Many have had to dip into savings to cover the furlough days from the sequester this summer, many DOD employees lost 6 days of pay.

And as I said earlier, this is not limited to just the government employees laid off. The service providers that depends on those workers buying goods and services as part of their work day see a drop in business.

With the uncertainty of how long this may drag on, with the possibility of default looming around the corner, the economy is on the thin edge.

 

[a_majoor]

I respect your opinion Edward,but the US is far from finished as a world power.What did Britain in were its socialist policies.In fact its what ails Europe as a whole.They cannot afford the military power to do much more than protect their own borders.They would fold in days of a Russian invasion.Fortunately Russia cannot afford a modern military.If their economy became like China's watch out !!

There are lots of interesting arguments, but the UK's decline in the 20th century can be pretty much be summarized as bankrupting themselves in 2 back to back global conflicts.

Edward's point about the Imperial decline of the UK actually predates socialistic policies (indeed even socialism, since Otto Von bismark didn't start the ball rolling on that idea until the late 1880's). Part of the problem was structural; the UK paid a lot to maintain "balance of power" poltics in Europe and more on maintaining a global Empire in the post Napoleonic Wars period, probably more than Imperialism brought back to the Treasury in the form of trade and payments.

At the same time, the British class system ossified and social mobility slowed considerably compared to the 1700's. British industry stagnated compared to European powers like Germany and especially compared to the United States, even Imperial Russia was industrializing at a greater rate. So I would have to put much of the blame on "cultural" factors that prevented human, physical and financial capital to be deployed to its greatest extent.

Now no analogy is ever exact, but I think you might agree that there are some similarities in this comparison. The massive deficits and debts that the US has accumulated since the post war period are certainly a structural problem, and much of the "culture wars" rhetoric does seem to involve the idea of class warfare and the relative hardening of social positions (the 1% meme, and constant calls for the "protection" of the middle class from taxes, foreign competition, Martians or whatever is politically convenient at the time are symptoms of these ideas), even if the reality is somewhat different.

Now the other thing that needs to be said is that decline may be relative; the British Empire in the period of decline that Edward outlines was still the single greatest Empire ever assembled, and the Royal Navy was the premier naval force in the world, even as other Empires gradually grew and other navies became qualitatively and quantitatively better than before. There is no doubt that the US economy is still larger than any other and the US military is still the premier military force on the planet, even as China, India and other nations grow their economies at a faster rate and upgrade their military power.

Now the US can indeed weather and manage this relative decline, what is frightening is how the entire political class has become so unmoored from reality they cannot seem to understand or act on urgent structural problems like the debt (and a default will be a very frightening event both domestically and globally), and are seemingly unresponsive to the concerns of the taxpayers (their real constituents).

 

[Edward Campbell]

To illustrate what wrong with the implementation of the the Asian pivot strategy:

1. China almost got what it wanted ("back burner" treatement) last week at the ASEAN meeting; but

2. It, China, settled for less (public disunity), but only because of ASEAN internal disagreements, not as a result of any US influence; and

3. Now the Philippines, a not inconsequential Asian power, has called a separate meeting (with Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam) to deal with China's island claims without US (or ASEAN) involvement.

It looks to me as though some Asians are less than convinced that the US "here to stay": or, for that matter, even "here."

More on the failure of the Asian Pivot[/] in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Policy:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/02/nonessential_barack_obama_asia_pivot_shutdown

Nonessential
Has Obama given up on the Asia pivot?

BY ALEX N. WONG, LANHEE J. CHEN

OCTOBER 2, 2013

On Oct. 11, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote an article in Foreign Policy titled "America's Pacific Century." The article laid out the theory and practice behind the Obama administration's "pivot" to Asia, an "essential," strategic rebalancing of U.S. focus toward the Pacific.

But what a difference two years makes. On Wednesday, the White House announced Obama's decision to cancel the last two days of his Asia trip, which was supposed to be a six-day swing through the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei, that the White House described as part of Obama's "ongoing commitment to increase U.S. political, economic and security engagement with the Asia Pacific." While this was precipitated by logistical obstacles created by the U.S. government shutdown, we can't help but note the irony: on the two-year anniversary of Clinton's article, Obama will not be celebrating and strengthening relationships with U.S. partners in Asia. In truth, there's not much to celebrate.

Two years after the pivot, U.S. influence in Asia has diminished. China's growing military presence and deep U.S. defense budget cuts threaten the longstanding preponderance of American military might in the region. The United States has not signed any new free trade agreements with Asian nations since Obama came to office; nor has it reached any significant diplomatic achievements that could serve to demonstrate and reinforce its role as a Pacific power.

The problem with the pivot is not one of strategy: More robust U.S. engagement is indeed required to take advantage of the opportunities that will arise as trade links throughout the Pacific expand. And the United States needs to channel China's ambitions to ensure they drive growth rather than instability. But like much of the Obama administration's foreign policy, the Asia pivot has been more promise than follow-through: a thin veil of spin masking a deep lack of substance.

At the outset, basing the pivot on a false premise undermined its credibility with U.S. allies.  President Obama's unfortunate and arrogant habit of denigrating his predecessor George W. Bush's eight years in office extended to his Asia policy. The whole notion that the United States needed to "rebalance" in favor of greater engagement with Asia implied that Bush had abandoned the region.

This is untrue. Bush improved the U.S. relationship with Asia-Pacific nations. In 2007, he signed the world's largest bilateral free trade agreement, with South Korea. He reached an historic nuclear cooperation pact with India in 2008. Bush forged close personal relationships with many Asian leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. And by initiating the Strategic Economic Dialogue with China in 2006, Bush paved the way for closer economic relations between the two countries.

The significant innovations and successes of his predecessor show just how little Obama's pivot has accomplished. 

On the military front, the Obama administration has routinely mentioned a Nov. 2011 agreement to cycle 2,500 Marines through Australia as an example of its expanding military footprint in Asia. But that contingent is mere symbolism amid the 130,000 U.S. troops already stationed across the Pacific -- and it does not represent an overall troop increase, since it will come from 9,000 troops being redeployed from Okinawa. As a result, this agreement did little to reassure allies -- but still managed to elicit Beijing's ire. In December 2011, Geng Yansheng, a spokesman of China's Defense Ministry, criticized the Australia plan, saying "we believe this is all a manifestation of a Cold War mentality."

More ominously, $1.2 trillion in defense cuts over the next 10 years will overtake the Australian agreement and undermine the America's ability to project military power into the Pacific. The cuts will lay off 120,000 troops and likely force the retirement of three aircraft carrier battle groups and ground a third of our combat wings.

On the economic front, Obama has been largely ineffectual. He has failed to corral China's flagrant theft of U.S. intellectual property, or curb China's manipulation of its currency.  He's failed to initiate talks with any Asian countries over new bilateral trade agreements. And it now appears as though negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would be America's largest free-trade pact, may not meet their December target.

Clinton, Obama's first secretary of state, at least paid lip service to a U.S. commitment to Asia -- but her replacement Secretary of State John Kerry may not even do that. During his February confirmation hearings,  Kerry questioned whether the pivot and its military ramp-up are "critical yet," and voiced concern over how Beijing would react to an increased U.S. presence. With Kerry having shown far more interest in the Middle East than Asia, the pivot may be over before it ever really began.

Such a sudden lurch away from a policy that was so recently the fulcrum of our global strategy would seriously damage our standing in Asia. To mitigate this damage, the administration should take a number of steps. First, it should prioritize reversing the sequester's military budget cuts, in order to invest in the naval assets necessary to ensure the United States plays a central role in Asian security. Second, even if he misses the December deadline, Obama should not let momentum behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership falter. He must insulate the U.S. negotiating position from his political base's protectionist demands -- pressure that has slowed trade talks in the past.

Finally, the administration should avoid reverting back to the soft rhetoric of "strategic reassurance" -- its initial, ill-defined 2009 policy toward China -- which Clinton seemed to think meant allowing U.S. interest in human rights take a backseat to climate change in relations with Beijing. That conciliatory posture shook the confidence of allies who depend on the United States to check China's more coercive tendencies.

Obama may not have meant for the curtailment of his trip to be a message to U.S. allies in Asia. But this is the third time Obama has cut an Asia trip short because of domestic concerns. We support Obama's Nov. 2011 announcement that in the Asia-Pacific region, the United States "is all in." But we're still waiting for him to make his move.

The problem, for America, is that it is like all other countries, and in all countries grand strategy is a function of the country's economic capacity and of domestic political concerns.

 

[a_majoor]

A very interesting look at the recent past. Donald Rumsfeld was interviewed and provides a look at how the Bush Administration was thinking and planning during its term in office, how personalities have a very large influence on how events unfold, and Rumsfeld's own assessment of the future:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/donald-rumsfeld-obama-i-begin-incompetence-problem_759183.html?nopager=1

Donald Rumsfeld on Obama: ‘I Begin with Incompetence as a Problem’
Talking to journalist David Samuels about his Kindle Singles interview with the former secretary of defense.
7:31 AM, OCT 4, 2013 • BY LEE SMITH       

David Samuels’ deeply reported oddball narratives and profiles have appeared on the covers of Harper’s, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and other magazines. Samuels has also contributed two long interviews for Amazon’s new Kindle Singles series: The first with Israeli President Simon Peres, and his most recent with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (available here, and Rumsfeld has also just published a new book, Rumsfeld's Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life). Recently, I spoke with Samuels to find out what sort of insights this longtime American policymaker had into U.S. foreign policy, past and present.

Why did you want to speak to Donald Rumsfeld, or more specifically, why now and about what?

One reason is that I wanted to do a sort of autopsy on the Bush administration’s war on terror, I wanted to see how those decisions made more than a decade ago have continued to shape American domestic politics and foreign policy even under Obama. My sense is that Bush pursued the Harvard business school model as an executive, insofar as the classic move any CEO would make taking on a bigger job would be to find the most experienced people he could and give them vertical areas of responsibility.

The problem was that each of the principals – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and the Bush-Rice tandem -- all wound up pulling in different directions. As Rumsfeld put it in our interview, “Sometime choosing A over B is preferable when A+B doesn’t make sense.”

When I asked him how disputes between policymakers were resolved, he shrugged and said he really had no idea. He said there were actually very few meetings in which policy was openly debated between the principals. Instead, everyone’s opinions went into what he described as a “a black box” – namely, the White House, where decisions were made by some unseen combination of Bush and Rice, and were often relayed by Rice, who clearly spoke for the President.

Rumsfeld struck me as the most interesting of those people to talk to right now because he is not speaking for a large section of the Republican party, as Cheney is, nor at the age of 81 does he imagine he has a political future. He’s got a well-earned reputation for blunt talk, and he has been held accountable for some very major failures, like force levels in Iraq and of course Abu Ghraib – not all of which were his fault. And he is also obviously very smart. So I thought he would make for an interesting interview about whether the war on terror has been a success, where it is going and how he himself experienced the decision-making process in the Bush White House.

Now, I profiled Condoleezza Rice for the Atlantic when she was secretary of state, and I think you could make a fascinating movie or stage play about the relationship between Rice and Bush. I’m hardly suggesting anything untoward -- just pointing out that two people of the same age and experience both felt themselves to a similar degree to be outsiders and found each other’s company useful and formed a very strong bond. No one besides the two of them knows how that happened, and what the content of that emotional relationship was, or what they talked about, and how it shaped policy. And neither one of them is talking about anything besides football.

By contrast, you can certainly see Dick Cheney on Fox opining about current events. But as a former vice president, he seems to feel that he has a responsibility to keep the confidences of the president largely to himself. Colin Powell seems not to feel the same sense of obligation. For the Rice profile, I also got to spend a little time with Powell and while I’m not saying he polishes a shiny statue of Colin Powell that he keeps by his bedside every morning, he has jealously guarded his good name, sometimes at the expense of the men he served with – an experience that he seems to feel besmirched by. So he is not necessarily the most interesting or reliable source about what actually happened, either.

Besides which, who doesn’t want to hear Donald Rumsfeld trying to restrain himself as he talks about what it is was like to travel with Henry Kissinger to China, or what Richard Nixon was like as a boss?

This wasn’t the first time you’ve taken Rumsfeld as your subject.

No, as with many people, my sense of Rumsfeld is largely tied to 9/11. I grew up in New York, I live here now, and I had spent a bunch of time in the Middle East, so with 9/11, I felt these two realities come crashing together. I wanted to understand how the U.S. government was going to respond, and the only real notes of clarity I could hear were in Donald Rumsfeld’s press briefings at the Pentagon. His manner was commanding and clear and had a slightly obnoxious Rat Pack-type edge. I think it was the last time that Americans saw a public official acting as an adult dealing on a regular basis with an experienced and well-informed press corps. This was sparring between intelligent people, which showed in the sharpness of the questions and in the sharpness of Rumsfeld’s retorts.

I had to see this for myself, partly as a reporter and partly for my psychological well-being, so I went down to Washington, for maybe 3 weeks, and attended maybe 5 or 6 of his briefings at the Pentagon. I then wrote a piece for Harpers that focused on one particular briefing, in which Rumsfeld explained to the press corps the nature of conflict, which he said in its scope, intensity and duration would be analogous to the Cold War. As someone who was secretary of defense during the heart of the Cold War, this was obviously something he had thought through. This statement led the nightly news in Germany, but no American news outlet picked it up. This struck me as dangerous—we were warned that this is what policymakers had in mind. If the popular meme became that the president lied us into war, like with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that led us into Vietnam, the reality is that I saw an outspoken cabinet official who was quite specific and blunt in his description of what was coming.

And yet Rumsfeld says in your interview that unlike the Cold War, the administration didn’t have a very clear idea of the intellectual underpinnings of the war. “The White House,” he says, “was very nervous about even talking about religion, for fear of being seen as being against a particular religion. And yet if you don’t pin the tail on the donkey and say that the enemy is radical Islam and Islamism and people who go out and kill innocent men, women and children to try to impose their views on others, and who are fundamentally opposed to the nation-state—we weren’t willing to say that. I was. But as an administration we weren’t.” So why didn’t the administration’s strategy match Rumsfeld’s clarity?

I think the process that Rumsfeld described – of decision-making by a camarilla, meaning by the President and a tight inner circle of trusted aides, while the heads of major departments like State and Defense are largely kept in the dark – has clearly persisted through the Obama administration. The policy results in both cases seem to be only half-baked.

What I think America wound up with policy-wise in Iraq was something like the Doctor Dolittle animal, the Pushmi-pullyu. There was Rumsfeld’s slimmed down, modernized strike force, which would sweep into Baghdad and decapitate Saddam’s regime, which fit with Cheney’s inclination to replace Saddam with someone ostensibly friendly to the US and then get out. But the post-invasion policy was actually the opposite of that – namely, the Bush-Rice construct that became known as the “Freedom Agenda,” and which foresaw a longer-term military occupation that would provide the stability necessary to turn Iraq into a model democracy that the rest of the Arab Middle East would want to emulate. Powell’s emphasis was on putting more troops on the ground, and having more cooks in the mix in the form of regional governments. So you had something with the head of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the body of a cow that didn’t give any milk.

If you look at Iraq today, the result is a mess of a country that cost America at least $2 trillion, and is currently governed by a pro-Iranian leader who has granted himself nearly dictatorial powers. Meanwhile, the Kurds have established what amounts to an independent country of their own in the north, massive car bombs go off in Baghdad every week, and no one in the Middle East looks at Iraq as a model of anything except of how American good intentions can lead to ruin.

You have a very nice story from Rumsfeld about Clinton coming up to him at the World War II Memorial after Abu Ghraib when he says “Don, there's no way in God's green earth that anyone with an ounce of sense could think you could know anything that was going on in Abu Ghraib halfway around the world on the midnight shift. You'll get through this, don't worry about it.” Rumsfeld is really impressed by Clinton—“True, gracious, political, and brilliant,” he says—but much less so by Obama.

I think Rumsfeld was personally and publicly shamed by Abu Ghraib in a way that still haunts him, which is why he says such nice things about Bill Clinton.

On the other hand, I think he honestly believes that Obama is incompetent, when it comes to geopolitics and also to making decisions that affect the American economy. “I begin with incompetence as a problem,” he told me in the interview. “I think his behavior reflects a lack of experience and a lack of a strategic concept, or some principles or values that he tests things against.” Accordingly, says Rumsfeld, “We are contributing to a vacuum in the world that’s going to be filled by people who don’t have our values and don’t have our interests and our beliefs, and that means it’s going to be a more dangerous world for us and for others.”

What seems to bother Rumsfeld most is his sense that America is a country in steep decline – which is a word that he used more than once. While he thinks that Obama’s Syria policy is a fig leaf for a disaster, he actually seemed less focused on specific policy choices than on his sense that the socio-economic foundation of American power is disintegrating. Without sustained American economic strength, neither American threats nor American offers of friendship are likely to carry much weight with the rest of the world.

How much Rumsfeld’s own policy choices, and the wars he helped to oversee, have contributed to that decline, is hard to quantify right now – but it’s also hard to argue that they helped. On the other hand, I think the country is definitely ripe for an argument about whether America wants to sustain its role as the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power, and what the alternatives will actually look like.

 

[Rifleman62]

My understanding is that these 800,000 public employees, full/part time and contract are on a paid furlough. When funding is approved, they all get back pay.

Not all are on paid furlough, and even those that are could be waiting months for back pay.

Which again goes to the point that the bills are still coming in, and need to be paid now.

Many have had to dip into savings to cover the furlough days from the sequester this summer, many DOD employees lost 6 days of pay.

And as I said earlier, this is not limited to just the government employees laid off. The service providers that depends on those workers buying goods and services as part of their work day see a drop in business.

With the uncertainty of how long this may drag on, with the possibility of default looming around the corner, the economy is on the thin edge.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/05/20822136-house-unanimously-approves-back-pay-for-800000-furloughed-federal-workers

They will have to wait, but they will not be out of pocket. A paid vacation.


House unanimously approves back pay for 800,000 furloughed federal workers

The House on Saturday unanimously approved legislation to provide retroactive pay for furloughed federal workers after the government shutdown ends. The vote was 407-0.

The White House said Friday that it “strongly supports” the legislation and urged its “swift” passage, even while warning that the single bill alone “will not address the serious consequences of the funding lapse.” The Senate could take it up as soon as today.

Approximately 800,000 government employees are furloughed during the shutdown.

Workers deemed essential and who are currently on the job will be paid for their work during the shutdown, although their paychecks could be delayed. But furloughed employees need congressional approval to receive back pay.
Advertise | AdChoices

After past shutdowns, Congress passed similar measures, but federal employee unions had warned early in this impasse that there was no guarantee that Congress would act.

The unanimous vote was the first sign of bipartisan unity between the House and Senate since both chambers approved legislation ensuring military pay during the shutdown.

During the budget stalemate, the GOP-led House has passed a series of bills to fund some of the most popular programs impacted by the funding lapse - like national parks and care for veterans. But the Senate has declined to take up those piecemeal measures, saying that the government should instead be fully reopened.

"I'm glad to see at the very least that the Senate has plans to take up this bill," Rep. Hal Rogers R-Ky., said of the Senate's likely action on the back pay legislation. "Stop the presses! The Senate's going to take up a bill!"

The  back pay measure was introduced by Democrat Jim Moran of Northern Virginia, which has one of the country’s highest populations of federal workers.

"The issue is fairness," Moran said on the House floor. "It's just wrong for hundreds of thousands of federal employees not to know whether they're going to be able to make their mortgage payment, not to know whether they're going to be able to provide for their families."

In a statement, House Speaker John Boehner lauded the passage of the measure and called for a resolution to the shutdown that includes measures to modify the Obama-backed health care reform legislation.

“It’s encouraging to see both parties come together to provide fairness for the 800,000 federal workers hurt by this shutdown," he said. "Now we should do something about the 800,000 jobs being destroyed by the president’s health care law."

Democrats continued to say they want GOP leaders to allow a vote on a government funding bill without add-ons that would make major changes to Obamacare.

Saying that ensuring retroactive pay was "the right thing to do," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said the fact that furloughed workers remain unable to go to work "highlights the sheer folly" of the ongoing government shutdown.

The House's move comes as the shutdown stretches into its fifth day. In an interview with The Associated Press, President Barack Obama again called on House leaders to put the "clean" funding bill up for a vote.

"We know that there are enough members in the House of Representatives -- Democrats and Republicans -- who are prepared to vote to reopen the government today," he said. "The only thing that is keeping that from happening is Speaker Boehner has made a decision that he is going to hold out to see if he can get additional concessions from us."

The Senate is in session on Saturday afternoon and could try to approve the retroactive pay bill unanimously.

 

[cupper]

From the Office of Personnel Management:

D. Pay

1. Will excepted employees be paid for performing work during a shutdown furlough? If so, when will excepted employees receive such payments?

A. Agencies will incur obligations to pay for services performed by excepted employees during a lapse in appropriations, and those employees will be paid after Congress passes and the President signs a new appropriation or continuing resolution.

(Note: Presidential appointees who are not covered by the leave system in 5 U.S.C. chapter 63 are not subject to furlough, but are also barred from receiving pay during a lapse in appropriations. These Presidential appointees will be paid after Congress passes and the President signs a new appropriation or continuing resolution.)

2. Will employees who are furloughed get paid?

A. Congress will determine whether furloughed employees receive pay for the furlough
period.

3. Will employees receive a paycheck for hours worked prior to a lapse in appropriations?


A. Under Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance issued in 1980 (below), employees will receive this paycheck. Although the payroll for the last pay period before the lapse will be processed potentially during a period of furlough, the minimum number of payroll staff necessary for this process will be excepted from furlough for the minimum time required to issue the checks, including checks for the last pay period before the lapse. This guidance can be found in OMB’s August 28, 1980, Bulletin No. 80-14, Shutdown of Agency Operations Upon Failure by the Congress to Enact Appropriations, paragraph 3.b.(1) (Appropriations and funds). OMB has reviewed and concurs in this answer.

4. When an employee’s pay is insufficient to permit all deductions to be made because a shutdown furlough occurs in the middle of a pay period and the employee receives a partial paycheck, what is the order of withholding precedence?

A. Agencies will follow the guidance on the order of precedence for applying deductions from the pay of its civilian employees when gross pay is insufficient to cover all authorized deductions found at http://www.chcoc.gov/transmittals/TransmittalDetails.aspx?TransmittalID=1477.

5. May an excepted employee be permitted to earn premium pay (e.g., overtime pay, Sunday premium pay, night pay, availability pay) during the furlough period?

A. Yes. Excepted employees who meet the conditions for overtime pay, Sunday premium pay, night pay, availability pay and other premium payments will be entitled to payment in accordance with applicable rules, subject to any relevant payment limitations. Premium pay may be earned but cannot be paid until Congress passes and the President signs a new appropriation or continuing resolution.

http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/furlough-guidance/#url=Shutdown-Furlough

Employees who work during the furlough period are still accruing pay for the hours worked, but will not be paid for those hours until after the CR has been passed and signed. The money will not be available to the agency until it has been appropriated.

For workers that are not permitted to work during the shutdown period, they do not accrue pay, since they are not working. However, as we just seen with the bill passed today, that they can be given backpay for the time they would normally be available to work during the shutdown period, but would be only at the discretion of Congress.

I have several friends and co-workers who's spouses are effected by the shutdown and are dealing with the various issues of not having a paycheck coming in.

There is also an interesting anomaly where employees who's positions are funded through sources other than congressional appropriations are still working. A former co-worker who went to a job at the Federal Highways Administration is still working, as her position s funded by the Federal Gas Tax. 

 

[muskrat89]

Always enjoy Thomas Sowell's take on things....

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2013/10/04/who-shut-down-the-government-n1716292?utm_source=facebook

There is really nothing complicated about the facts. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted all the money required to keep all government activities going -- except for ObamaCare.

This is not a matter of opinion. You can check the Congressional Record.

As for the House of Representatives' right to grant or withhold money, that is not a matter of opinion either. You can check the Constitution of the United States. All spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives, which means that Congressmen there have a right to decide whether or not they want to spend money on a particular government activity.

Whether ObamaCare is good, bad or indifferent is a matter of opinion. But it is a matter of fact that members of the House of Representatives have a right to make spending decisions based on their opinion.

ObamaCare is indeed "the law of the land," as its supporters keep saying, and the Supreme Court has upheld its Constitutionality.

But the whole point of having a division of powers within the federal government is that each branch can decide independently what it wants to do or not do, regardless of what the other branches do, when exercising the powers specifically granted to that branch by the Constitution.

The hundreds of thousands of government workers who have been laid off are not idle because the House of Representatives did not vote enough money to pay their salaries or the other expenses of their agencies -- unless they are in an agency that would administer ObamaCare.

Since we cannot read minds, we cannot say who -- if anybody -- "wants to shut down the government." But we do know who had the option to keep the government running and chose not to. The money voted by the House of Representatives covered everything that the government does, except for ObamaCare.

The Senate chose not to vote to authorize that money to be spent, because it did not include money for ObamaCare.

 

[tomahawk6]

 

[tomahawk6]

Someone finally read the funding bill that was signed into law.
Civilian employees of DOD will be called back to work.

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=120905

Hagel Announces Recall of Most Defense Department Civilians

By Army Sgt. 1st Class Tyrone C. Marshall Jr.
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5, 2013 – Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced today he is recalling most of the Defense Department civilians who were placed on furlough as a result of the government shutdown which began Oct. 1.

“Today, I am announcing that most DOD civilians placed on emergency furlough during the government shutdown will be asked to return to work beginning next week,” he said.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I respect your opinion Edward,but the US is far from finished as a world power.What did Britain in were its socialist policies.In fact its what ails Europe as a whole.They cannot afford the military power to do much more than protect their own borders.They would fold in days of a Russian invasion.Fortunately Russia cannot afford a modern military.If their economy became like China's watch out !!

It doesn't have to be "finished," and many smart people (whose articles I have posted here in Army.ca) warn that those who posit an American decline are quite wrong. And broadly, I agree with them: America still has HUGE potential. It cannot, in my opinion, be pushed into decline; any outside pressure, such as the bond fire sale that Russia is reported to have proposed in 2008/09 would be met with a fully unified and effective American response - sane, sensible economic policies - fully supported by China, Australia, Canada and Europe.

I'm not worried about America being pushed into decline.

What frightens me is the prospect of America being pulled into decline.

That, a self imposed collapse, is, in my opinion, a very real and very dangerous possibility. The problem is that, unlike the push scenario, a pull into precipitous decline will be supported by about 40% of the population! The nature of the ongoing culture wars suggests that Americans will cut off their noses to spite their faces.

The threat to America is not external - in fact, as I have mentioned elsewhere, countries like China who are not, generally, regarded as America's friends would rally around in the event of an outside push. But no one, not Canada, not China, will be able to do anything about a self inflicted wound.

It's Pogo all over again:

_________

Edit: to add

And then there is this article from the National Post which suggests that it is a not a small Tea party rump that drove the US into shutdown but, rather, it is the broad bases of both parties, the majorities of which are hell-bent on two opposite courses:

    1. Bigger and bigger and more and more intrusive, activist governments for the Democrats; versus

    2. Smaller, less intrusive governments for the GOP.

Polling suggests that the two positions are, each, broadly and nearly equally supported (something like 40% vs 40% with only 20% undecided?) by Americans at large.

 

[pbi]

...The threat to America is not external - in fact, as I have mentioned elsewhere, countries like China who are not, generally, regarded as America's friends would rally around in the event of an outside push. But no one, not Canada, not China, will be able to do anything about a self inflicted wound.... 

It's always much easier to drum up unity, restore flagging patriotism and garner domestic political support by depicting an external threat: this is probably an ancient lesson. Witness the rallying of Britons during the Falklands War. It's much more difficult and less palatable to side with Pogo's observation (unless of course you just heap all the blame on The Other Party.)

It seems to me that a serious and productive dialogue about the internal problems that threaten to hollow out America is doomed to failure in the current climate, when all we hear is the Right screaming "You Hate America!" and the Left shrieking about "the Race to the Bottom!".

Can a reasonable adult dialogue, with thoughtful compromise by both Reds and Blues, even happen anymore?

 

[tomahawk6]

Maybe the US can learn from the dialogue between those in Quebec and the rest of Canada ? Deep divisions and yet Canada has yet to splinter apart.

 

[Rifleman62]

If your a Democrat, and blaming Bush is wearing out, join the Cdn media and blame Harper.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/u-s-anti-keystone-billionaire-takes-aim-at-harper-s-pipeline-stance-1.1913098

U.S. anti-Keystone billionaire takes aim at Harper's pipeline stance
Democratic Party fundraiser criticizes Canadian PM on hardline stance on pipeline

The Canadian Press Posted: Oct 04, 2013

An anti-Keystone XL pipeline crusader has written to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, suggesting Canada's aggressive lobbying for the project played a part in the government shutdown south of the border.

Tom Steyer, a San Francisco billionaire and a major Democratic Party fundraiser, chastises Harper for saying he would not "take no for an answer" from U.S. President Barack Obama on TransCanada's Keystone XL.

In a question-and-answer session with the Canadian American Business Council last week in New York, Harper took a hard line on how Canada would respond if the Keystone XL project is rejected by the White House.

    'This won't be final until it's approved and we will keep pushing forward.'- Prime Minister Stephen Harper

"My view is you don't take no for an answer," Harper said. "This won't be final until it's approved and we will keep pushing forward."

Steyer takes issue with those comments in his letter to the prime minister.

"Have your government, your government's lobbyist and/or agents representing TransCanada communicated with House Republicans about including Keystone in the original litany of demands put to President Obama?" Steyer asks in the letter to Harper sent Friday.

Steyer says in the dispatch that TransCanada is launching a new advertising campaign aimed at stakeholders in Washington, D.C.

"News of this advertising campaign comes in the context of House Republicans having closed down the U.S. government as well as threatening to oppose the extension of the country's debt limit unless certain demands were met," Steyer wrote.

"Included in the original list of House Republican demands was that the Obama administration grant approval for the building of the Keystone XL pipeline."

The combination of the advertising campaign and Harper's comments last week "raises the question of whether your office is working hand-in-hand with TransCanada to try to exploit the current situation in Washington, D.C., at the expense of the American people," Steyer wrote.

 

[tomahawk6]

Democrats are long on excuses but short on results.

 

[PuckChaser]

Its pretty difficult to appear not at fault when the Democrat stance is "If you would just let us do whatever the hell we want to do, there'd be no shutdown!"

 

[Brad Sallows]

The current fracas isn't really over the ACA; it's over budgeting and fiscal management.

Consider the division of US federal spending into "mandatory" and "discretionary".  Once passed into law, mandatory spending programs grant people a right to make claims and are outside what most people think of as the annual budgeting process, which concerns discretionary (eg. government operating) spending.  The only check on mandatory spending that forces people to the table is the debt ceiling.  The only check on discretionary spending that forces people to the table is the requirement for appropriations (either in the traditional sense or pay-as-you-go CR).

In the absence of a debt ceiling, Democrats would get everything they want with respect to mandatory spending: they could refuse to negotiate, and all the mandatory spending would still go ahead.  If CRs were the default in the absence of appropriations, Democrats would get everything they want with respect to discretionary spending (ie. spend whatever amount is required each day to keep all government agencies funded to fulfill their purposes).  These basic facts explains why the US federal budgeting process has mostly been ignored by Democrats, particularly in Senate.  Autopilot suits them.

The current Democratic position is "full funding".  The current Republican position is "reduce spending".  The critical issue is long-term mandatory spending.  The ACA features on both sides of the divide because of its huge mandatory spending liability and the requirements of the participating agencies to have the necessary discretionary funding to make it work, and features prominently because it is new and large.

The complication is that neither party really wants to keep the ACA.  The Democrats claim they do, but the ACA is their path to single payer.  They want to break private health insurance in the US, but want to break it on their terms.  The Republicans have their own ideas about health care reform which do not include breaking private health insurance.  (Those of you inclined to instinctively chant that Republicans have no ideas about health care reform, please go find a middle school debating society in which to sound off.)  A common characteristic of revolutionary or unstable times is that government sets out to execute substantial reforms, but one or more factions decide that if change is up for discussion, they have other paths that might be followed.  That is the case now.  The ACA is a pig; it's defenders put a lot of lipstick on it but it is a poorly conceived and written piece of legislation that should only have been passed by a party with a solid 60-70% "mandate" (as in, popular vote for president and Congress).  Its execution so far has been a mess.  Whether it needs to be torn down completely and replaced or modified is debatable.  Democrats punted a lot of things past the 2012 election and would undoubtedly like to punt more things past 2014, but there is a limit to how far they can go without trying to get some benefits into people's hands to allow greed to work its magic.

So there are two incompatibilities: desire to break health insurance vs unwillingness to do so, and desire to maintain spending levels at high watermark vs unwillingness to do so.  Pretending that only one party is stubborn to an unwarranted degree is just an ideological circle jerk.

The way out of the debt ceiling impasse for Republicans is simply for the House to pass short (3 month or so) "clean" lifts.  The risk of default is removed, but the issue stays on the table and consumes everyone's time and energy.  Reid seems to be content doing nothing with the Senate unless it is exactly what he wants.  Obama is the one who needs a long-term lift if he wants to do anything but talk about it for the next three years.  He will have to persuade Democrats in Congress to make deals.  But Reid seems to be the one behind "not one step back", not Obama.

There doesn't really need to be a way to break the appropriations impasse, since it doesn't cause a true "shutdown".  If figures cited in the media are accurate, more than 85% of government function is not impeded.  The House can keep passing appropriations bills or CRs, and Reid can keep rejecting them.  Undoubtedly Obama will sign whatever gets through Senate.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Deep divisions and yet Canada has yet to splinter apart.

The divisions don't affect the ability of Parliament to function.  We essentially have a unified executive and deliberative body (the Senate chiefly being decoration), and as long as a party forms a majority government in Parliament they "own" public spending.  There is no-one else to blame for irresponsible overspending or underspending, and they want to be re-elected.

I'm not sure how the US could fix its problem.  Assuming the two-party system to be sufficiently embedded as to not have to deal with the complications of a minority government in the House, one solution would be to vest all budgeting authority in the House and eliminate the distinction between mandatory and discretionary spending.  The Senate would get no say, and the president could either accept it or reject it.  A party wishing to win the House would have the same incentive to budget approximately responsibly as any other deliberative body with full control.

 

[a_majoor]

A bit of snark from Instapundit, but hidden within a bit of hope as well. This relates to the evolving cultural divides I have described on this and other threads, changes in demographics, technology and so on have upended the structures and institutions built up since the 1930's, and the current political class (benefiting from the current structure) is digging in to hang on to their perques and benefits (and I mean all the establishment political class) while new structures are growing and new models are being tried out, and new generations of politicians and political movements are emerging in the new landscape. The "America that works" that Glenn Reynolds refers to is the entrepreneurial, high tech segment that built the IT revolution and is now doing things like launching space missions using vehicles and systems built by themselves and not via a government agency. The other half of the comparison is the Obamacare websites:

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Washington Isn't Working. Plus, a comparison of the political class with the parts of America that do work. “One America can launch rockets. The other America can't even launch a website.”

 

[Edward Campbell]

I own up to a full share of the blame for this, but: the topic is a "Grand Strategy for a Divided America." I fear we are focusing too much on the divide and not enough on the strategy. We all remember what happens to threads about American domestic politics ...

I think we can agree that strategy, grand or not so grand, depends upon resources, so the threat of a financial disaster provoked by a default does have an impact on America's grand strategy ... but how?

What are the likely strategic implications of a default? There are guesstimates out there about the damage a default would do to the recovery ... the DoD budget could not, logically, survive a repeat of 2008/09. How many carrier battle groups would be mothballed? How many combat brigades? What are the strategic implications? And: cui bono? Why? And can China, for example, pick up some of the strategic slack?