On the first day of a federal government shutdown, the head of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families says the state can manage funding some of the agency’s programs for about a month before it enters “uncharted waters.”
The federal government shut down at midnight on Oct. 1 after negotiations between the White House and both party leaders failed to agree on a short-term funding bill that requires 60 Senate votes to pass.
Democrats in Congress are demanding an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, as well as a rollback of cuts to Medicaid and other health programs.
News with a little more humanity
WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.
Republicans have claimed Democrats are taking government funding hostage, with Senate Majority leader John Thune saying he would be willing to negotiate separately on extending tax credits.
Jeff Pertl is the secretary-designee of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families. The department receives around 60 percent of its funding from the federal government and handles a variety of programs for children and low-income parents, like the Wisconsin Works employment program and the Wisconsin Shares child care subsidy program.
Pertl told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that states must step in to address the pause in funding.
“There are fund reserves to be able to run the government and provide benefits. States are going to step up and ensure that, in these critical programs, that folks can continue to have access to their child care subsidies, that we can continue to run child welfare, Medicaid, SNAP, veterans’ benefits,” Pertl said. “But there is a limited horizon for that.”
Previous government shutdowns have ranged from as little as one day to over a month. The longest federal government shutdown lasted for 34 days under President Donald Trump from late December 2018 to late January 2019.
“If this shutdown looks and feels like the ones that we’ve seen before and it’s a couple of weeks or a month, then we’re going to be OK,” Pertl said. “If this is a long-term government shutdown — and I think there’s real concern that might be the case — we’re going to be in uncharted waters.”
A memo from the Office of Management and Budget shared with POLITICO calls for agencies to avoid repurposing balances from previous years to fill funding gaps from a government shutdown. Pertl said the directive is sunusual and dangerous.
“We’re able to carry over balances depending on what’s going on with utilization,” Pertl said. “Those are exactly the kind of tools states use to manage through crisis moments like this.”
Pertl ultimately laid the blame for the shutdown at the feet of President Trump, comparing the budget impasse at the federal level with the bipartisan Wisconsin state budget passed in July.
“Evers and Republican leaders in the state Legislature came together to forge a bipartisan budget compromise and it protected and invested in child care, in K-12 and higher education … Nobody got exactly what they wanted,” Pertl said. “But it is a stark difference (between) how to achieve bipartisan governance and what states are doing compared to the chaos and disarray we see playing out in D.C. and, frankly, on social media.”
