Federal funding for several federal agencies and programs expired on Saturday. The President wouldn’t sign a Senate-approved short-term continuing resolution extending funding for some federal agencies through Feb. 8. The House subsequently approved a short-term continuing resolution that included $5.7 billion for a wall at the US Mexico border. The Senate couldn’t pass that House Resolution, and federal funding for several agencies and programs then expired, forcing a shut down of some programs.
The shut-down won’t impact very many core public health programs (except for WIC and IHS- which I’ll get to in a sec). That’s because a couple of months ago Congress passed a bill that included funding for the HHS family of agencies: CDC, HRSA, SAMHSA, NIH, CMS, FDA, AHRQ.
Other federal agencies and programs, such as WIC, EPA, and the Indian Health Services are affected because they weren’t in the HHS funding bill. Public health programs outside of HHS are affected (WIC is within the US Department of Agriculture- not HHS).
Fortunately, Arizona has enough funding to keep WIC clinics open for a few weeks at least. Providing this information broadly is important so participating families don’t think the shutdown means that WIC clinics will be closed due to the shutdown.
Public health programs working in Indian Country funded by HHS will not be impacted butn some other IHS services will be impacted. IHS will continue to provide direct clinical health care services, but some programs and activities that aren’t directly related to the safety of human life may not be available during a shutdown.
Tribally-operated health programs will continue to operate under the direction of the Tribe- and each Tribe will determine how to address the impact from a government shutdown.
For more information about initial estimates for activities under the appropriations lapse you can review the HHS Contingency Staffing Plan for Operations in the Absence of Enacted Annual Agriculture and Interior Appropriations.
