Vilsack Warns Farmers, Children Will Feel Shutdown’s Effect Almost Immediately

WASHINGTON — With a partial federal shutdown growing ever more likely come midnight Saturday, the Biden administration on Monday began underscoring the consequences of Congress not quickly taking steps to avert it.

At Monday afternoon’s press briefing at the White House, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack painted a particularly sobering picture, based in part on his memories of the October 2013 government shutdown, which occurred during his first tenure as Ag secretary.

That 17-day shutdown resulted in nearly 800,000 federal employees being indefinitely furloughed, idled military contractors, and businesses unable to obtain loans from the Small Business Administration.

By the time that shutdown ended on Oct. 17, 2013, with the signing of an interim appropriations bill, the sweeping effects of the shutdown included cash flow shortages for programs dealing with everything from domestic abuse to the arts to environmental protections, and supply chain disruptions for everything from critical minerals to passenger jets.

At the time, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., referred to the event as the “Tea Party Shutdown.” Vilsack on Monday recalled it as a time of “needless challenges and disruption.”

In welcoming the agriculture secretary to the White House briefing room, White House Spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre struck much the same tone as Pelosi had a decade ago.

“Republican chaos continues to march us toward an extreme Republican shutdown,” she said. “We are calling out how a shutdown would damage our communities, economy and national security. And we’re going to hold extreme House Republicans accountable for the reckless cuts they are demanding as a condition for keeping the government open.” 

Vilsack told the gathered reporters the shutdown would almost immediately impact the approximately 6.7 million low-income women, infants and children who rely on federal food assistance through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, also known as WIC.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the program provides nutrition-rich foods, nutrition education (including breastfeeding promotion and support), and health care and social services referrals to eligible low-income women and children. 

Vilsack said it affects over 50% of all newborns in the country.

“With a shutdown, what we would see across the United States is a denial of those benefits and opportunities,” he said.

Though the secretary said a WIC contingency fund would keep the Women, Infants and Children special nutritional program going for a few days after a shutdown starts, after that, continuing aid would be hit or miss, depending on whether the state agencies administering the program still had unspent funds on hand.

“Whether it happens in a matter of days or, in some states, a matter of weeks … during the course of a shutdown, millions of those moms, babies and young children would see a lock of nutrition assistance,” he said.

Even in the best of circumstances, Vilsack said, “the vast majority of WIC participants would see an immediate reduction and elimination of those benefits, which means the nutrition assistance that is provided would not be available.”

The Biden administration did include an additional $1.4 billion for WIC in its list of requested “anomalies” to be included in a stopgap continuing resolution that would fund the government after fiscal 2023 funding expires on Sept. 30.

Typically rare, anomalies are a way of continuing to provide needed, reliable funding to an agency, program or policy in light of exceptional circumstances.

For an anomaly to take effect, however, a continuing resolution has to be passed, and House Republicans currently look nowhere near getting that done.

The larger Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides nearly 42 million participants broader food benefits, would receive aid in October, but Vilsack said a prolonged shutdown, one lasting more than a month, would have “some serious consequences to SNAP.”

Vilsack also, understandably, spoke at length about the shutdown’s impact on farmers.

He noted that once a shutdown goes into effect, one of the first things that happens at USDA is that all of its Farm Service Agency offices close. “And there is one of these offices in virtually every county in the country,” he said.

One of the primary functions of these offices is to assist farmers with the interim financing they need to cover expenses during the fall harvest.

“Now is the time when farmers are harvesting their crops,” Vilsack said. “And they’re seeking marketing loans to assist them in ensuring they can get a decent price for their crop. When we have a shutdown, those loans are not available.

“But it’s not just about farm loans,” he continued. “It’s about newlyweds who have decided to purchase their first home in a rural small town.

“Perhaps they’re getting a loan guarantee from a bank that is guaranteed by USDA or perhaps they’re getting a direct loan from USDA to be able to purchase that home. With a shutdown, those loans don’t take place. And it’s conceivable in those circumstances that when they are not able to close the loan, they may lose the deal.

“So this is a matter of real consequences,” he said.

Vilsack also echoed a sentiment expressed by many House Democrats in recent days — that the ripple effects of a shutdown could be just as devastating as the direct impacts.

“USDA is responsible for maintaining 195 million acres of natural forests and grasslands … places where people go to recreate and when they do, they provide tourism dollars to the communities in which they’re spending their time,” he said.

“When we have a shutdown, those national forests are closed. So those family trips don’t take place and those tourism dollars are not spent, putting the jobs they support at risk,” he added.

Even a brief government shutdown could result in as many as 50,000 Agriculture Department employees being furloughed, meaning the rural communities in which they live would quickly feel the impact of their lost buying power.

Though a 2019 law passed by Congress requires that furloughed workers receive back pay once funding resumes, there is no mechanism to recompense local businesses for their lost sales.

“The reality is when there is a shutdown, we’re looking at a significant disruption of the lives of millions of Americans,” Vilsack said.

To be sure, the secretary has been no fan of the House budgeting process this year, and his disdain was evident as far back as May when the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee allocated just $6 billion in funding to the department — some $800 million less than President Biden’s proposed 2024 budget.

In a statement released at the time, he said House Republicans had proposed “stark cuts to USDA’s programs, and in some cases whole offices, in a way they know would only harm America’s economy and communities.” 

On Monday, Vilsack said the agriculture bill that might get a vote this week, and versions of the continuing resolution that have been floated “basically carry forward the extreme cuts we saw in the budget proposed by the Ag subcommittee.”

“At the time, I said the budget was pathetic. It was punitive. And it was petty. And I would say that continues to be the case,” he said.

Turning to another major piece of legislation anxiously awaited by farmers and tens of millions of others, Vilsack also said a shutdown on Saturday would likely have an adverse impact on the reauthorization of the farm bill, the current version of which will also expire over the weekend.

“I know the chair and ranking members of the House and Senate Ag committees are working hard to get this done, and we know the farm community and rural areas in our country need certainty and consistency,” he said. “And we’ll do everything we can to make sure that this thing gets passed as quickly as it can. But that’s pretty tough to do if there’s a shutdown. In fact, you can’t do it.”

The problem, Vilsack said, is that once the shutdown begins, the USDA employees who should be providing technical assistance during the bill crafting process will be sitting at home.

“Here’s how it works: Some senator or representative has a great idea about how they might be able to solve one of the problems they are trying to solve in the farm bill. They call our office for technical assistance,” Vilsack said. 

“The phone’s not going to get answered because no one’s there. Why aren’t they there? Because we’re going to shut down. That’s why it’s so ridiculous for us to even talk about this. The speaker needs to do his job,” Vilsack said, referring to Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. 

“There’s no reason for this shutdown. At the end of the day, we had a deal,” the secretary said, referring to the debt limit agreement signed by the president in early June.

“It was a deal that passed in the Senate; it was a deal that passed in the House with a majority of not just Democrats but Republicans voting for it. A deal’s a deal. And, you know, to me, there’s no reason for us to be even having this conversation,” Vilsack said.

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