Continuing Resolutions (CR’s) and the specter of shutdowns are regrettably an evergreen article in the Washington Report. For this article, we decided to take a different approach to the issue. The following is an interview FMA’s Government Affairs and Communications Associate Adam Kay conducted with FMA National President Craig Carter.

Adam: “Craig, thanks for joining us. Congress once again barely averted a shutdown with yet another CR signed into law only hours before the deadline. We’ve talked a lot about how CR’s harm the federal workforce. Can you speak to how it impacts you down at Norfolk [Naval Shipyard]?”

Craig: “Well, one of the main issues is that CR’s don’t allow us to do adequate planning because we don’t know if we’ll have the funding. If you can’t start planning for a major project like doing critical upgrades on a carrier drydock, it’s going to be delayed. Limited funding also keeps us from buying in bulk – we can only buy limited amounts because of the budget constraints of the CR, which gets expensive and time-consuming fast.”

Adam: “I understand that even when a shutdown is averted, the planning required for the possibility is time consuming. What has your experience been with that?”

Craig: “I’ve always been on an emergency response team, so I’m never exempt from work. But even the discussion of a government shutdown delays a lot of the work we do as we have to put out furlough lists, exemptions to the lists. A couple weeks out we have to start putting these lists together, and we have to set up meetings to call everyone in in the event of a shutdown. It’s just bad for morale, because you don’t know if you’ll be going to work Monday or if you have a paycheck coming in. You’ll get paid eventually, but how long is it going to be? And since we know they’re getting paid eventually, why not just let people come in?

Each department has to come up with their own furlough lists that get forwarded and signed off on. It’s quite a bit of work for the people who have to do it. This year alone, we’ve had two shutdown threats and we aren’t out of the woods yet.”

Adam: “All of this is coming at a time where there’s already a lot on feds. What kind of effect has this had on the workforce?”

Craig: “We should not also be going through a continuing resolution with everything that’s going on. It’s just too much to be putting on feds. Feds are already coming in to work working through a pandemic. We’re dealing with the vaccine mandate. And now we’re going through a continuing resolution while still having to deal with all the everyday bureaucracy that a federal employee has to deal with on a daily basis.

The threat of furloughs makes it harder to keep good people. With the bureaucracy we have to deal with, a lot of people are inclined to go make more in the private sector with fewer headaches. What really concerns me is that most of the American public doesn’t understand what feds do, and what services they would lose during a government shutdown.”

Adam: “That’s a lot to put on feds. What’s convinced you to stay in the government instead of the private sector?”

Craig: “What keeps me as a fed? The pride of working for my country. I’d say job security helps, but we’re talking about being furloughed here, so that’s not the draw it could be. But duty, patriotism, and knowing how important what I’m doing is – that matters to me. It’s a big part of why I’m still here even though I’m eligible for retirement.”

The current continuing resolution, signed on December 3, 2021, will keep the government funded through February 18, 2022. FMA is hard at work meeting to convince Congress the fully fund the government through regular order, and to prevent yet another pointless shutdown or harmful continuing resolution. Continuing resolutions impose billions of dollars in costs on the federal government and on American taxpayers, and returning to regular order in the appropriations process is FMA’s top issue brief.