No one answered the tax-help hotline at the IRS on Friday. And you could forget about getting advice on avoiding foreclosures at the 80 Housing and Urban Development field offices nationwide.
It was “furlough Friday.” Roughly 5 percent of the federal workforce — 115,000 people at six major agencies — were told not to show up as the government dealt with the continuing effects of the sequester spending cuts.
The good news for many federal workers: a four-day Memorial Day weekend. The bad news: no pay for the day.
The across-the-board budget reductions, the result of Washington’s failure to work out a long-term, deficit-cutting plan in November 2011, essentially shut down some government agencies, though it had a negligible impact on others.
The IRS, embroiled in a scandal over agents targeting tea party groups, got a day of quiet. Its offices were closed with more than 90,000 employees furloughed on Friday, one of five days the agency plans to shut down this year to save money.
A self-employed, small business owner calling the agency’s hotline to check on the deadline for second-quarter estimated taxes got a recording saying, “Due to the current budget situation, all IRS offices are closed on Friday, May 24.” The tax deadlines are unaffected.
HUD furloughed nearly its entire staff of more than 8,400 employees, closed the agency’s headquarters in Washington and shut down about 80 field offices.
That meant no walk-in housing counseling services at HUD offices to help people wanting to buy homes, refinance or avoid foreclosure. The furloughs also created delays for developers and municipalities needing technical assistance or approval of housing projects, officials said.
At the Labor Department, spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander said 437 employees out of about 16,500 were furloughed. She said the layoffs were negotiated between supervisors and employees to have the least possible impact on the agency’s operations.
Furloughs also hit the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Management and Budget and the Interior Department.
J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, dismissed any suggestion that the extra day was welcome news to anyone.
“‘Furlough Friday’ is a disgrace to our nation,” Cox said in a statement. “Let no one believe for a moment that this is some kind of four-day weekend or holiday for federal employees forced out of work without pay.”
He called it “a day of shame for the lawmakers and administration officials who allowed sequester and furloughs to occur.”
The automatic cuts that kicked in March 1 have had a disparate effect on individual agencies and their workers. The State Department, for example, says it can handle a $400 million cut without forcing employees to take unpaid leave. The Pentagon, on the other hand, decided to furlough about 680,000 civilian employees for 11 days through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
President Barack Obama has pressed Congress to reverse the automatic cuts, but many Republicans have shown little inclination to do so. Lawmakers see the broad reductions, recently estimated at $81 billion, as a surefire way to trim the federal deficit despite the outcry from defense hawks in Congress that the military cuts are too painful.
Congress did step in last month to undo furloughs for air traffic controllers after a week of coast-to-coast flight delays, and lawmakers have found money for meat inspectors.
There was another reminder on Friday of the budget cuts. Missing from the promotion ceremony and pageantry at the U.S. Naval Academy where Obama delivered the commencement address was the Navy’s Blue Angels aerobatic team. Budget cuts led to the cancellation of their program.
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