GOV’T SHUTDOWN GOES INTO EFFECT AS CONGRESS FAILS TO REACH DEAL ON CR

With the House and Senate at loggerheads over stopgap funding legislation to fund the government in Fiscal Year 2014, the White House Office of Management and Budget several hours before midnight last night officially told federal agencies to begin implementing plans to shut down the government. But what that means differs from agency to agency, and from employee to employee. At the National Nuclear Security Administration, many federal NNSA employees will not work, but 343 employees and two presidential appointees deemed essential to the agency’s operations are “excepted” from the shutdown. The employees fall in three categories, according to a Department of Energy memo outlining the Department’s shutdown plans: nuclear weapons maintenance, nonproliferation activities, and Naval Reactors work. “With regard to weapons programs, excepted personnel will have oversight concerning stopping or maintaining critical control operations systems that involve nuclear materials or maintenance of one-of a-kind equipment (e.g. nuclear processing facilities) in order to make shutdown decisions,” DOE said. “Employees also need to stand ready for movement, dismantlement and safe harboring of nuclear materials, weapons parts and weapons systems.”