Here’s a great opinion piece one of my co-workers wrote for the Houston Chronicle.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/op...l-employee-shutdown-Houston-NASA-13525441.php
I’m a federal employee. Stop holding me hostage! [Opinion]
Like millions of Americans, I recently took some time off to enjoy the holidays with friends and family. While this should have been a time of joy and celebration, a black cloud hung over me and my co-workers. I am a federal employee and like around 800,000 other people, I was not sure what the government shutdown would mean for me. Would I continue to work after the holidays or be forced into an involuntary vacation? And if my work was lucky enough to be exempted from the furlough, when would my next paycheck come?
The fact is many of us federal employees do our jobs because we believe in what we do. I know I could make more money in the private sector. Instead, I have spent the last seven years of my life working on NASA’s Commercial Crew Program trying to return our astronauts to the International Space Station on an American-made spacecraft. This is not just an interesting job. It serves the interests of the United States by saving the taxpayer dollars we currently have to pay the Russians for this service, and it helps guarantee access to the unique national laboratory in low-Earth orbit while spurring development in a fledgling industry.
Whether you are for or against the wall, this is the wrong way to resolve it. Many federal employees will spend that forced vacation worrying about when their next paycheck will come to pay their bills. An assumption, perhaps a dream, that they will eventually get paid provides little solace when rent and food bills go unpaid now.
Beyond inflicting pain on so many people, many whom are living paycheck-to-paycheck, taxpayers should also be outraged at the waste. The Office of Management and Budget estimated that the 16-day government shutdown in 2013
cost American taxpayers $2 billion in lost productivity.
During the shutdown, the Securities and Exchange Commission can’t process mergers or Initial Public Offerings. The Federal Aviation Administration can’t approve commercial space launches. The billions in dollars the president has promised American farmers hurt by the trade war with China go undistributed.
For small companies like Texas-based Exos Aerospace, which had to
delay its inaugural launch, the federal shutdown can make or break a business. Some businesses are offering free or discounted services to furloughed employees, which is great for the community but reduces the businesses’
bottom line, and likely will come back to hurt everyone in higher prices. Standard & Poor’s estimated that the 2013 closure
cost the U.S. economy $24 billion. Some estimates have the current shutdown costing around
$6 billion dollars a week. People like me and my co-workers are starting to think about delaying major purchases and deferring car repairs. Others are worrying about how they will pay for child care.
Scientific research is also being impacted. Hundreds of federal employees who were going to attend and contribute to the
annual American Meteorological Society meetingwere forced to cancel their trips. The threat posed by climate change, the increased flooding it brings, should have Houstonians worried that meteorologists’ important work will be interrupted.
Hundreds of astronomers likewise were forced to cancel their attendance at the
American Astronomical Society meeting this week.
This does not even take into account the psychological impacts. I am fortunate enough to work at NASA, ranked in 2018 as the best place to work in the federal government. But I still wince when year after year politicians call federal employees lazy or unnecessary. The current administration and some members of Congress express clear disdain or outright hostility toward a variety of federal employees, including climate scientists, State Department staff and intelligence workers.
Adding to this negativity, treating civil servants as pawns in the budget process is downright demoralizing. I would anticipate, especially if the shutdown continues on much longer, that many people will look elsewhere for employment. Without a doubt many of the younger people who are needed to refresh the ranks of retiring workers will think twice about pursuing opportunities in the federal workforce.
President Trump came to office in 2016 claiming that he had a mandate for a border wall. Yet even when Republicans held all three branches of government, he was unable to get funding for a physical barrier. Democrats captured the House in the midterm elections due in part
due toopposition to the wall. Public opinion polls routinely show that a
clear majority of the nation does not want the wall.
So what should the president and Congress do? First, they need to stop holding public servants hostage and immediately approve the spending bills that were passed by the Senate last year and by the House this year. They should also provide back wages for those who were furloughed. Then, the appropriations process needs to be revamped so that the government stops lurching along on continuing resolutions and shutdowns, using its own citizens as a bludgeon for special interests.
Dempsey works on NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
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