A 1980 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memorandum defines “essential” government services and “essential” employees as those:
providing for the national security, including the conduct of foreign relations essential to the national security or the safety of life and property;
providing for benefit payments and the performance of contract obligations under no-year or multi-year or other funds remaining available for those purposes; conducting essential activities to the extent that they protect life and property, including:
- medical care of inpatients and emergency outpatient care;
- activities essential to ensure continued public health and safety, including safe use of food, drugs, and hazardous materials;
- continuance of air traffic control and other transportation safety functions and the protection of transport property;
- border and coastal protection and surveillance;
- protection of federal lands, buildings, waterways, equipment and other property owned by the United States ;
- care of prisoners and other persons in the custody of the United States ;
- law enforcement and criminal investigations;
- emergency and disaster assistance;
- activities that ensure production of power and maintenance of the power distribution system;
- activities essential to the preservation of the essential elements of the money and banking system of the United States, including borrowing and tax collection activities of the Treasury; and
- activities necessary to maintain protection of research property.
Let me be absolutely clear here. There will be no disruption in Social Security, welfare, civil service retirement, or any other kind of open-ended mandatory program payments. The mail will not stop because the Post Office is largely self-funding (with you know, those stamps you buy to mail things with). Air traffic controllers will not go on furlough, jets will keep flying, the Border Patrol will keep on attempting to secure the border that Janet Napolitano wants unsecured, and our military will stay in the fight, however poorly and treasonously led by the current Commander-in-Chief.
