Lawmakers were working Friday to to keep the government funded past the Dec. 20 midnight ET lapse of the current funding measure.
Reports signaled the House will vote on three bills: a continuing resolution until March; a disaster relief package, including economic aid for farmers; and an extension of the farm bill.
If the funding measure fails, USDA has a contingency plan in place for essential workers and services. The plan would retain a small number of administrative employees to oversee activities including disaster response and cybersecurity should funding lapse.
Impacts on Upcoming USDA Reports
We asked Lance Honig, Director of Methodology Division and Chair of the Agricultural Statistics Board at USDA-National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), what impact a potential shutdown would have on upcoming USDA reports.
“For all of our end-of-season crop and December stocks data, we are finished collecting the data, so the only issue would be with timing,” Honig told Farm Journal. “In other words, we have all of the data we need to work with, just need time to analyze & compile it. So if there were a shutdown, it would just depend on how long it was in determining when the reports could be published (if any delay were necessary). So not a question of if we could publish, just maybe when.”
Honig says the Hogs & Pigs report is scheduled to publish January, so that is another report that will hinge on timing.
“The one I would be watching more closely is the January Cattle report. We will collect that data in January, so IF we were shut down then, it gets a little more complicated. Not saying we couldn’t do it — just that the overall timeline/process would have to be re-worked,” said Honig.
Economists React
Economists began detailing the fallout of a potential shutdown. GDP growth would fall by 0.15 percentage points “for each week it lasted,” Alec Phillips, an economist for Goldman Sachs, wrote this week in a client note. The disruption shouldn’t hinder the federal government’s ability to borrow in the near term, he added.
