
Government Shutdown to Affect Some Programming at CES 2019 - taspeotis
https://www.ces.tech/News/Press-Releases/CES-Press-Release.aspx?NodeID=2c0021f5-9b3f-4da8-8b00-5daebfba8aed
======
ENOTTY
I manually scanned the speakers list[1] looking for US federal officials,
including both political appointees and civil servants (and employees of the
national laboratories, who aren't technically federal employees). I don't know
if the list has been changed to omit the speakers who can't attend, but there
are a few listed speakers who don't have any sessions listed in their bio
pages.

Here's a list of them:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wmuy9K_xvVQLum0Orq1x...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wmuy9K_xvVQLum0Orq1xmOs9s9z5XIXbup5MqKDcAW8/edit?usp=sharing)

If I missed anyone or made any mistakes, please comment and I'll update my
sheet. The furlough status of any individual position within the federal
government is a very complicated beast, so take my assertions of furlough
status with a grain of salt.

Also remember that aside from the speaker and their support staff, there are
probably dozens of government personnel attending simply as attendees. If
furloughed, those people can't attend and the federal government might not
even be able to get refunds for registration fees.

In general, conferences represent an opportunity for US government personnel,
including practitioners, regulators, and senior leaders, to interact with the
communities and industries they oversee. Nobody is helped by barriers to these
interactions, such as the furlough. They don't help the government modernize
and they don't help the government craft effective regulation.

[1]: [https://www.ces.tech/Conference/Speaker-
Directory.aspx](https://www.ces.tech/Conference/Speaker-Directory.aspx)

------
sailfast
Based on some other news articles[1], it appears Ajit Pai was supposed to
speak at CES and is now no longer attending, which seems like a fairly
significant person to drop given how important spectrum and approvals are to
these manufacturers. (feelings about Pai's current policy prerogatives
notwithstanding)

[1] [https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/ces-2019-us-
government...](https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/ces-2019-us-government-
shutdown-fcc-ajit-pai-1203100251/)

~~~
ENOTTY
Just for completeness sake, here's the complete list of pulled attendees
mentioned in the article:

* Ajit Pai, FCC Commissioner

* Brendan Carr, FCC Commissioner

* Rebecca Slaughter, FTC Commissioner

* Unspecified others from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Department of Homeland Security (DHS); the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Still speaking: Elaine Chao, Secretary of Transportation

FEMA is under DHS and EPA is under DOI so those make some sense. HHS did get
an appropriations bill, but that only covered 60% of the Department. The other
chunk of HHS is funded by the Agriculture and Interior appropriations. Certain
activities of the FDA can be funded by user fees, but it doesn't seem like
most of the FDA can be funded that way.[1]

[1]: [https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy-2019-hhs-contingency-
sta...](https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy-2019-hhs-contingency-staffing-
plan/index.html)

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pmorici
A bit tangential but, It will be interesting to see what happens this time
because, unlike in the past, congress passed the Defense portion of the budget
for the full year so the military (and civilians that work for the Department
of Defense) aren't effected by this shutdown.

My bet is that it makes it more likely that this could drag out much longer
because Trump's base views it as a win - win. If the Democrats cave they get
their wall. If they don't then all those departments that they want to
eliminate are closed down while this drags on. Either way they are getting
something they want so they have no reason to compromise.

~~~
belorn
While that describe the reason why the Republicans might continue the
shutdown, what are the reasons for the Democrats? I would guess that by
blocking the wall they get favor with their voter blocks, and by getting the
government to shutdown they hope that the republican voter block will revolt?

~~~
pmorici
Their view seems to be that that based on the things the president has said
and done[0] the public will ultimately lay the blame / credit for the shutdown
at his feet and that will hurt him politically.

From a strategic view a shutdown is bad for the economy and nothing hurts a
president's chance of re-election like a down economy.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkL3fheL2MY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkL3fheL2MY)

------
infocollector
Is there a quantitative analysis somewhere of who is effected by government
shutdown and by how much?

~~~
pmorici
It borders on impossible to quantify because you have the first order effects
of government workers not being paid but then you also have a much larger
number of contract workers and obligations that may or may not be able to
continue depending on how the funding for their contract happens and the
location the work is performed.

Beyond that you have all the second order effects like landlords and lenders
not getting paid on time which starts to become a problem around 2-3 weeks in
when the first pay day is missed.

~~~
yyrrll
[deleted, for reasons of personal avoidance of social media pitfalls]

~~~
Jtsummers
800k middle class people not getting a paycheck is actually a pretty sizable
hit to the economy. The average federal salary is a bit over $80k. Rounding
down, that's about $3000 in the average federal paycheck. So you're looking at
around $2.4 billion taken out of the economy over the past couple weeks (their
second missed paycheck is coming up on Friday, so double that).

~~~
AnthonyMouse
That isn't really what happens though. For the people who are still working,
they get paid retroactively once they pass a budget. So they live on savings
or borrow money for a while, which is no fun for them but is what actually
happens, and then replace most of that money when they get the back-pay. The
actual loss is what they lose in interest over that period of time, which is a
small fraction of the total.

For the workers who are actually sent home and correspondingly never get paid,
that means the government still has the money it would have had to pay them.
So either it goes back to the taxpayer (in theory) or more likely they find
some other way to spend it. Either way it goes back into the economy again.

So it's not about the money.

There are some other issues though. One is you lose whatever value the
government employees were providing. Though this is mostly the broken window
fallacy. If you give someone a month off, they may still do something
productive with it -- work a temporary job, catch up on home repairs, take a
vacation or attend a conference etc. Whether or how much this is less or more
productive overall than their government work is a case by case determination,
but it's not as if typical government work is renowned for its efficiency.

Another issue is that if it extends for too long, the furloughed employees
will find other work permanently. That can be a problem if you only have to
turn around and pay recruitment and training costs to replace them again. On
the other hand, it may actually help to thin the herd -- it's a lot easier to
reduce or eliminate inefficient programs after some or all of the people who
normally lobby to keep their jobs are already gone.

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kull
~Immigration is a big thing affected by the shutdown. Visa processing delays
is a big issue for many businesses and individuals relying on it. For example,
there are OPT applications now sent by many. Such a mess.~

edit: incorrect info, see comments below

~~~
ayberk
I don't think this is true. USCIS is mostly unaffected by this, because
applications are fee-based:
[https://www.fragomen.com/insights/alerts/immigration-
impact-...](https://www.fragomen.com/insights/alerts/immigration-impact-
potential-partial-government-shutdown)

~~~
kull
You are correct. USCIS is not affected, E-verify is. That’s great news! Thank
you for correcting me. Also this is pretty well summarizing what’s affected
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-shutdown-what-
closed...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-shutdown-what-closed-open-
affected-explained-post-office-irs-national-parks-2019-01-05/)

~~~
ktsmith
E-Verify is affected but you just run your E-Verify requests when it's back
up. While this is a longer outage than normal E-Verify goes down for other
reasons more often than it should and you deal with those in the same way.

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quietthrow
This shutdown of govt has at least some benefit. The way of life that has
manifested in the USA, at least for the last few decades, is that the
masses/middle class is just too busy to be active citizens. They barely get to
getting out and voting every two or four years let alone have the time to
understand what’s going on within their govt. Meanwhile corporations and
people in position of power (who have the masses working for them and hence
have the time to do what they want) are able to devote resources (time or
money or both) to influence the govt. the result is, for the large part, a
govt of the (rich/ powerful) people for the the (rich/powerful) people.
Finally, the final state of the system like this is always one of polarization
because the only people who come out to vote (given it’s so hard to vote) are
the ones that care radically about a point or a position. Ironically the
politicians they will get will also be the ones that cater to these people who
have deeply held strong beliefs. Net net you get something that is on either
end of the spectrum and not something that is “centrist”. The only time this
changes is that the troubles are soo bad that more people become active
citizens and vote for a (usually when objectively looked a opposite but
somewhat extreme) position. But this is temporary as the system will regress
to the mean (polarization in this case) unless the fundamental shift of active
citizenry takes place. And for that you need a radically different environment
where people have time for it and the govt actually makes it easy to be a
active citizen. Net net, this shutdown will hurt people enough to take a
position - where this guy doesnt get a second term. (Again an extreme response
to a extreme situation when you look at it objectively).

