September 2013: Photo of the Day
http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/photogallery/september-2013-photo-day
The G20 Summit In Saint Petersburg, Russia
http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/photogallery/g20-summit-saint-petersburg-russia
The Vice President and Dr. Biden's Trip to India and Singapore
http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/photogallery/vice-president-and-dr-bidens-trip-india-and-singapore
What's Affected by a Government Shutdown?
http://www.usa.gov/shutdown.shtml
What's Affected by a Government Shutdown?
Below, find an overview of some of the government services
and operations that will be impacted until Congress passes a budget to fund
them again. For detailed information about specific activities at Federal agencies,
please see federal government contingency plans.
Vital services that ensure seniors and young children have
access to healthy food and meals may not have sufficient Federal funds to serve
all beneficiaries in an extended lapse.
Call centers, hotlines and regional offices that help
veterans understand their benefits will close to the public.
Veterans’ compensation, pension, education, and other
benefits could be cut off in the case of an extended shutdown.
Every one of America’s
national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to
the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, will be immediately closed.
New applications for small business loans and loan
guarantees will be immediately halted.
Research into life-threatening diseases and other areas will
stop, and new patients won’t be accepted into clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health.
Work to protect consumers, ranging from child product safety
to financial security to the safety of hazardous waste facilities, will cease.
The EPA will halt non-essential inspections of chemical facilities and drinking
water systems.
Permits and reviews for planned energy and transportations
projects will stop, preventing companies from working on these projects. Loans
to rural communities will be halted.
Hundreds of thousands of Federal employees including many
charged with protecting us from terrorist threats, defending our borders,
inspecting our food, and keeping our skies safe will work without pay until the
shutdown ends.
Hundreds of thousands of additional federal workers will be
immediately and indefinitely furloughed without pay.
Services That Will Continue During the Government Shutdown
Social Security beneficiaries will continue receiving
checks.
The U.S. Postal Service will keep delivering mail.
Active military will continue serving.
Air traffic controllers, prison guards, and border patrol
agents will remain on the job.
NASA Mission Control will continue supporting astronauts
serving on the Space Station
WP Politics
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics
Shutdown transforms White House operations, foreign policy
outreach
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/shutdown-transforms-white-house-operations-foreign-policy-outreach/2013/10/04/80a85ada-2d03-11e3-b139-029811dbb57f_story.html
On normal days, the White House boasts a research team of
about 10 people, which can pull cringe-worthy quotes and opponents’ voting
records at a moment’s notice to provide the president’s aides with political
ammunition.
But now the office consists of just one person, director Ben
Holzer, who is the only one left in the wake of this week’s government
shutdown.
The White House is working with a skeleton crew as it
engages in one of biggest political fights of President Obama’s presidency,
curtailing its operations as it battles with congressional Republicans who do
not face the same level of cuts. First lady Michelle Obama’s busy fall schedule
has come to a halt, while the crew of ushers, housekeepers, groundskeepers,
chefs and others who care for the 132-room presidential mansion is down from 90
to 15.
Beyond Washington,
the staffing shortage is also limiting the ability of President Obama and his
top aides to engage internationally at a time when he is hoping to make
progress on key foreign policy priorities in his second term.
Late Thursday, the White House canceled the president’s trip
to Indonesia and Brunei, where
he had planned to attend two major summits, including the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) gathering. While Secretary of State John F. Kerry will lead
the delegation instead, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the fact
that Obama won’t be there “sends the wrong message to the world.”
“There are consequences to this, and it’s unfortunate,”
Carney said. “This is not good for America, it’s not good for our
economy.”
On Friday, U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman also
canceled negotiations scheduled for next week in Europe
because of “financial and staffing constraints” imposed by the government
shutdown.
The partial government shutdown, which took effect early
Tuesday after Republicans attempted to scale back Obama’s health-care law, cut
White House staff by 75 percent, leaving 436 of 1,701 employees on the job.
Some of the president’s main congressional foes haven’t been
forced to cut as deeply because they have more flexibility on how much to
shrink their offices.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who led the push to defund the new
health-care law in exchange for funding the government, has furloughed about 40
percent of his staff, while House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has sent
roughly half his staff home.
Other lawmakers have made deeper cuts: Senate Majority
Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) furloughed half his employees in Washington and
his entire state staff except his southern Nevada director. Sen. Joe Manchin III
(D-W.Va.) cut his staff from 44 to 13.
“Each member is given discretion about their own staff,”
Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck wrote in an e-mail.
Within the Obama administration, the shutdown’s effects have
often reverberated in unexpected ways. On Wednesday, an official from the
International Monetary Fund called the White House Council of Economic
Advisers, hoping to schedule a future appointment with Jason Furman, the
panel’s chairman. Furman, one of four people still working in the office,
answered the phone himself; IMF staffers were soon buzzing about a government
in such disarray that one of its top economists has to answer his own phone.
One U.S.
ally in the Persian Gulf complained this week
that the shutdown appeared to have delayed visas for its delegation to the
Board of Governors meeting at the IMF and World Bank next Friday, according to
a person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the issue.
State Department spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff declined to
discuss specific cases but said the process was funded by fees not affected by
the shutdown.
Dennis Ross, a counselor at the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy who served as a senior Middle East adviser to Obama from 2009
to 2011, said the president needs to combat the prevailing view overseas that
Americans are “weary and wary of” international entanglements and that the U.S.
political system is incapable of tackling major problems.
“The combination of that perception of weariness and
wariness, and the current political dysfunction, will create an impression that
the U.S.
is less capable of being active on the world stage,” Ross said.
Several foreign officials said they understood, but regretted,
the president’s last-minute cancellation of his Asia
trip.
“Without Obama, you can imagine how disappointed we are,”
said Tifatul Sembiring, the information minister in APEC host Indonesia,
according to Reuters. “We could hardly imagine he wouldn’t come.”
As for the East Wing, where the Obama family lives,
officials would not comment on the shutdown’s impact.
“It certainly tests your operational skills,” said Anita
McBride, who served as director of White House Personnel under two presidents
and oversaw brief shutdowns in the Reagan administration.
“I remember it being very quiet in the house,” she said.