Is the average person seeing any changes with the government shut down?
“The answer is that unless you’re taking a vacation to a national park or Washington, D.C., or visiting the national museums in the next few days, you’re probably not going to notice it,” said Emory University political scientist and poli-sci professor Alan Abramowitz. “Some services will be affected, but mostly we’ll feel it indirectly or not until later,” recently reported The Dodge Globe.
Mary Noble, senior editor of Politix.Topix.com, said, “The first people to notice the shutdown will be the 800,000 federal employees who will be sent home when the shutdown begins. Their pay will stop immediately – which they will certainly notice.”
Employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Dodge City, Kansas noticed. The office is currently closed, and will reopen when funding is restored according to a communication from that office. Until that time, no services are available, including the agricultural market reports.
The Department has regional offices in Dodge City, Kansas and Amarillo, Texas.
The shutdown is also triggering the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to furlough 68 percent of its staff according to a recent piece from Harvest Public Media. This could have a major impact on food safety because there will be fewer staff members to identify and respond to food borne disease outbreaks.
State public health departments should be working as normal, but CDC federal investigators won’t do in-depth research using genetic and molecular analysis to link outbreaks across state lines during the shutdown.
