Last week, we received a tweet from a local educator. “How do I explain the #GovernmentShutdown to fourth graders?” asked Jacob Anderson. “The teacher and I are struggling with all the questions our students have.” Anderson works as a paraeducator in Angela Dailey's fourth grade classroom in Woodsdale Elementary School in Abington, Massachusetts.
We responded to Anderson saying we’d be happy to help. Could they send us their questions? Yes, they responded. Working together, the kids compiled a list of questions that touched on issues ranging from school lunches to national safety during the shutdown.
1. Why did the government shut down? Why doesn't the government have enough money? Why do some government things stay open while others shut down?
Government agencies like the Defense Department or the Environmental Protection Agency don‘t have any money of their own. Congress gives them money to spend.
Every year, Congress has to approve money for each federal agency. There are 12 separate bills they have to pass, each one covering a different chunk of the government. This year, they passed five of them, including a budget for the Defense Department and a budget for Congress to keep working. But they did not pass the remaining 7 bills that provide spending money for lots of government agencies including the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
None of those agencies can spend any money — including paying their employees — until Congress passes (and the president signs) legislation approving their budget.
Imagine it this way: Your family may have a subscription for cable TV, and a subscription to Netflix, and a subscription to Spotify or some other music service. That means you have agreed to pay a certain amount every month for “entertainment” in your house. But you still have to ACTUALLY PAY each company separately every month. If you don’t, they’ll cut off your service.
Congress could pass the bills needed to reopen these agencies and send everybody back to work, but the president says he will not sign them unless they include money to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. Democrats in Congress don’t want the country to build a border wall. So they cannot move forward with any of the 7 remaining bills until they resolve this dispute.
The Department of Homeland Security — which runs the security lines at airports — is not funded, and is “shutdown.” But because airport security is an “essential” activity, those employees are required to go to work anyway. They just won’t get paid until Congress and the president agree to approve legislation funding their agency. Many other agencies have some employees who are in this boat: required to work for the safety or security of the country, but not allowed to be paid.
Government agencies have run out of money 10 times since 1981 (according to a group called the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget) but most have these have been for just a day or two or over a weekend so they had very little impact. There have now been four bigger ones – two while President Clinton was in the White House that lasted a few weeks, and one 16 day shutdown in 2013 under President Obama. This one is now the longest ever.
Investigative reporter Paul Singer says, “I have written about government spending for many years, so I have a good general understanding of what is going on. But for the specific details, I check in with experts, like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget or even the congressional committees that are responsible for passing the spending bills.”
2. Are school lunches affected by the government shutdown?
School lunch at public schools does depend in part on funding from the federal government. Should students be worried? "Absolutely not," said Catherine Donovan, president of the School Nutrition Association of Massachusetts. Donovan, who is also the school nutrition director of the Hamilton-Wenham school district, said that the government has made money available to the states for school lunches through March. "It's business as usual, and we'll continue to provide the delicious and nutritious meals we serve every day."
WGBH News' Lisa Williams found this out by Googling "school lunch directors" and discovered the national School Nutrition Association website, where she was able to find the phone number for the School Nutrition Association of Massachusetts. After a quick call, she had the answer to the question.
3. Will homeless shelters be shut down?
The short answer is no, but some of the programs that help people get out or stay out of homelessness may be in jeopardy.
Most Massachusetts homeless shelters are funded by the state. “So directly, there should not be an impact and shelters should not be closing over the federal shutdown,” said Lyndia Downie, the executive director at Pine Street Inn, a homeless shelter in Boston.
But Pine Street Inn also receives federal grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for a range of housing programs, including one in which they find vacant apartments, help homeless people move into them, and help them with rent. That grant will run out at the end of this month. Downie says they have enough funds to keep that program going for now, but that’s not her only concern. “It’s if five or six of our programs end up expiring, that’s where I see the risk.”
Also, Downie worries the shutdown will result in people losing crucial social services, which could cause them to become homeless. For example, Section 8 vouchers, which help 7,000 Massachusetts families pay rent, will stop being funded after March 1.
“This is very real to the people we work with,” Downie says. “Life has already been tough. And having fewer barriers is always better than having more.”
WGBH News reporter Craig Lemoult placed a call to the Pine Street Inn, a Boston homeless shelter, and interviewed the shelter’s executive director to answer this question.
4. Which Massachusetts national parks are open?
The short answer is, it really depends. Some places like Boston's Freedom Trail and the USS Constitution and Museum are open while others like the Blackstone River Valley National Park and the New Bedford Whaling National Park are closed. Some parks have enough staff and money to remain open and some don't. National Park websites aren't being actively updated during the shutdown, but each says whether they are open or not. So when in doubt, check online. Also, some outdoor National Parks may be open, but it's likely their visitor centers and other public facilities aren't. So, plan ahead.
Amanda Beland, an associate producer of WGBH News’ All Things Considered afternoon news radio program, has done a lot of reading about national parks. She used the internet to research information about how the shutdown is affecting the parks.
5. What if a war happens during the shutdown and will we be safe?
That’s a very smart and important question.
You may have heard that this is a “partial” government shutdown. That means that while many of the jobs our government normally does have temporarily stopped, services that are called “essential,” or very important, are not part of the shutdown.
The work performed by the men and women of the United States military is considered “essential.” Their job is to protect the country in the event of war and other dangers. The military will continue to protect American citizens during the shutdown.
However, it is important to remember that there are many government agencies besides the military that protect Americans in different kinds of ways. This includes the U.S. Coast Guard, which responds to emergencies in our waters; the Transportation Safety Administration, which make sure airplane passengers are safe; the Border Patrol Agency, which protects our borders.
These agencies will also continue to do their work of protecting Americans during the shutdown, but they have been affected by it, and many workers for those agencies have to do their jobs without being paid until the shutdown ends.
WGBH News reporter Isaiah Thompson confirmed the answer to this question by reading articles by the New York Times, Vox.com, NPR and USA Today.
6. Can immigrants still come to the United States during the shutdown?
Conflict over immigration — in particular, the fact that the President and Congress do not agree on how or whether to fund a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico — is a major factor in the shutdown.
We asked Sarang Sekhavat, federal policy director for the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), whether or not the shutdown has affected immigration. The answer? It depends. Several different organizations deal with different parts of the immigration process. Some are funded during the shutdown while others are not. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency, which processes immigration applications, isn't affected much by the shutdown because most of its operations are funded by the fees that people pay when they apply. What's affected, Sekhavat says, is enforcement. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, which guards the U.S. borders, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which enforces immigration law, are still doing their jobs, but they are not getting paid for their work while the shutdown is happening.
WGBH News’ Lisa Williams asked other reporters in the newsroom who could answer this question. They gave her the phone numbers and emails of a number of different sources, and she called them to get answers to this question.
7. How will the government find a solution? About how long will it be before they agree?
Some questions the children had — like these — we could not answer. But this is already the longest shut down in American history, and they are questions that are on the minds of many Americans as the partial government shutdown enters its second month.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
