Nevada delegation in Congress decries looming shutdown

All four of Nevada’s representatives in the U.S. House are urging colleagues to avert a shutdown of the federal government, though lawmakers are increasingly bracing for the reality they may not have a deal in place ahead of this weekend’s deadline.

Most federal agencies stand to face some kind of reduction in service if lawmakers are unable to send budget bills to President Joe Biden’s desk by midnight Saturday, the start of the federal government’s new fiscal year.

Central to the issue is a small group of House Republicans demanding deep slashes to the federal budget and an increase in resources to control crossings over the southern border from Mexico amid a record surge of migration.

Those members, who call themselves the House Freedom Caucus, include such GOP politicians as Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Paul Gosar of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. They have effectively taken control of the House due to a procedural rule that allows just one representative to call for a vote that could potentially unseat Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California.

Republicans hold a nine-seat majority in the House, and McCarthy was elected speaker in January. But it took 15 rounds of voting induced by the holdout of key ultraconservative Republicans — most notably those in the Freedom Caucus — before McCarthy finally won the post.

Among the concessions McCarthy made to gain the backing of those in the Freedom Caucus was to allow a single member to call for a vote, known as a motion to vacate, to oust the speaker. The resulting vote requires a simple majority for removal.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Congress and the White House had already worked out top-line spending levels for next year with an agreement this summer that allowed the government to continue borrowing to pay its bills. But McCarthy was deviating from that deal and courting a shutdown by catering to Republicans who say it didn’t do enough to cut spending, he said.

McCarthy could bring that spending package to a vote in the House but would risk losing his speakership, said Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev.

“We expect because of the deal that he made with the minority, extreme faction of his party when he was elected speaker, he’s afraid that one of them would issue a motion to vacate him and remove him from the speakership,” Lee told the Sun. “Kevin McCarthy is more concerned about his power than the impact that this is going to have on our economy and on American families.”

Rep. Mark Amodei, a Republican whose district encompasses Northern Nevada, told the Sun in an emailed statement that government shutdowns “disrupt the business of actual governing” and are not an effective tool for negotiating. He’s the lone Republican in Nevada’s federal delegation.

“These accomplish nothing unless your priority is to fundraise from your own faction or become a talk show darling,” Amodei said in the statement. “The issues of the day deserve to be everyone’s priority and a closed government does nothing to solve our present problems.”

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 77-18 to approve a continuing resolution, which would keep the government open through Nov. 17 at current spending levels, plus boost funding for the war in Ukraine by $6 billion and add $6 billion for U.S. disaster relief while talks continue.

McCarthy and members of the House’s right flank, however, have signaled they would not support the Senate’s plan.

“We should be governing,” Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., said during a media call Wednesday. “Government is there to serve people, to help people. We need to get this done and you could wrap it up by the end of the week, at least by Monday. But you know, nothing’s moving.”

If a shutdown arrives, millions of federal employees will be furloughed and many others — including those working in the military and the Transportation Security Administration — will be forced to work without pay until it ends.

In previous shutdowns, many TSA agents called in sick rather than report to work not knowing when they would get paid, causing long lines and delays at security checkpoints everywhere, Lee said.

The most recent shutdown, also fueled by Republicans, lasted five weeks in late 2018 and early 2019 and forced many TSA agents into relying on food banks to feed their families. Without pay, they were forced to call in sick while finding other immediate sources of income, she said.

A repeat scenario could be hurtful for Las Vegas, a tourism-dependent city with one of the largest airports by volume in the nation. And with high-profile events like the Formula 1 Grand Prix coming to the Strip in November, any kind of slowdown could negatively affect the state’s tax revenue, Lee stressed.

“There are predictions that this government shutdown is going to last weeks and weeks,” Lee said. “We expect 100,000 visitors each day to come through Harry Reid International Airport (for F1). And when TSA workers are not getting paid for work, guess what? Some of them don’t show up to work.”

An economic assessment from Goldman Sachs estimated a federal shutdown would subtract 0.2 percentage points from fourth-quarter gross domestic product growth each week it continues, according to The Associated Press.

A handful of federal programs that people nationwide rely on everyday could also be disrupted — from dwindling funds for food assistance to potential delays in customer service for recipients of Medicare and Social Security. The ripple effects would come down to how long a shutdown lasts and the varying contingency plans in place at affected agencies.

Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on the Budget, released a database estimating how a government shutdown would affect each state, as well as its impacts cumulatively.

In Nevada, the database states 15,594 active-duty and reserve military personnel — primarily at Nellis and Creech Air Force Bases — would continue to work without pay. An additional 16,578 federal workers in Nevada would face furlough or be forced to work without pay. Those numbers don’t include vendors or contractors that work with federal agencies.

Amodei, however, noted a law signed by former President Donald Trump in 2019 pays federal employees retroactively once a shutdown ends. And while some federal services might be slowed, access to Veterans Affairs health care, and Medicare and Medicaid should remain relatively unaffected.

Social Security entitlements will still be dispersed on time, and the U.S. Postal Service will still operate regularly. The service is funded through the sales of services.

Lee told the Sun she sponsored legislation this week to reallocate funds to the U.S. Treasury to ensure active-duty service members continue to be paid during a shutdown, as well as two other bills that would stop congressional members from being paid when the government shuts down.

“If Congress can’t get the job done, then members of Congress should be treated like every other federal employee and not receive a paycheck as well,” Lee said.

Further, Nevada’s 493,254 beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would lose access to benefits like food stamps, and 52,976 recipients of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Woman, Infants and Children (WIC) here could lose benefits once current funding runs dry.

“We are working with our Senate counterparts to prevent this shutdown,” Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., and leader of the powerful Congressional Black Caucus, said in a statement to the Sun. “Still, extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene want to force a shutdown to pass their draconian cuts, which would fire 224,000 teachers nationwide, 1,885 in my district alone.”

National parks and other federally managed lands would see a reduction in workforce, which may result in the closure of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Red Rock National Conservation Area and other nearby parks and monuments. Boyle’s report stated 4.4 million people visit Nevada each year for outdoor recreation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture would be unable to process certain housing loans, which provided $56.3 million in funding to help 223 families in rural Nevada last year. The USDA alsowould be forced to stop processing farm loans, which totaled $14.3 million in funding for Nevada farmers last year.

Additionally, the Small Business Administration would stop processing certain loans, putting on pause a program that provides nearly $375 million to Nevada small businesses annually.

“Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, we don’t want to shut down,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., told the Sun on Wednesday. “It’s really going to be up to the far-right members of the House to decide if they’ll come to the table.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.