The end of February is the deadline for the Congress to fund the operations of the many agencies in the Department of Homeland Security. A compromise before the last election funded the department through Feb. 28, but additional action is needed for the remainder of the fiscal year. As Joe Davidson reported in his column for the Washington Post of Feb. 3, those appropriations are not certain.
The sticking point is Congressional insistence that they will not fund major portions of President Obama’s immigration policy. The funding passed the House of Representatives with the exclusions included but the bill is now trapped in the Senate. The Democratic minority in the senior body is refusing to permit a vote on the appropriations bill as long as it restricts funding for the presidential initiatives.
15,000 DHS Employees Face Furlough
The result is that an estimated 15,000 DHS employees face a furlough on March 1, while the remainder will be working without pay until funding is restored. DHS has about 240,000 employees but the furloughs will impact each of the department’s agencies a bit differently.
In comments made on CNN on Feb. 8, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson upped the ante by stating that furloughs could affect 30,000 department employees. He told the reporters that as many as 80 percent of the employees at FEMA would be furloughed. Furloughed federal employees have been eligible for unemployment benefits in the past, in most states but not all. Furloughed employees are not permitted to use accumulated annual leave while on furlough.
The DHS procedure for furloughs in the event of a loss of funding has this to say:
Non-exempt activities are all other activities that do not fall into any other categories. Employees in positions performing these functions should be furloughed during a federal funding hiatus. This could include employees who may have to be recalled at a later date, if the furlough continues for more than a week.
Examples:
- Planning (strategic, business, budgetary, etc.)
- Research and development activities.
- Most policy functions, administrative, as well as programmatic, unless those functions can be justified by the above exceptions.
- Regulatory, legislative, public affairs, and intergovernmental affairs.
- Training and development.
There are nearly three weeks remaining for the Senate to resolve this conflict before any furloughs take place. Senate Republicans have several options, including persuading enough Democrats to end the obstruction of the DHS appropriations bill. The language around the immigration funds in question could be reworked to satisfy enough Senators from both parties, but it would then have to pass the House again. The same situation would hold true if the Senate restored all the funds. The House would have to approve the changes.
For now, the impasse continues. The threat of a furlough hangs over the heads of as many as 30,000 federal employees in the Department of Homeland Security.
