Reuters reports:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will take one of the biggest hits of any federal agency if the government shuts down this week, operating with under 7 percent of its employees, according to guidance issued by the agency.
Among those furloughed would be most workers at the Office of Air and Radiation, which is in charge of writing and implementing most of the EPA’s major air pollution rules. The clock would also stop, for now, on the EPA’s eagerly-awaited proposal on renewable fuel volume standards for 2014.
On the other hand, EPA staff could use the opportunity to get out there and evangelise………
EPA is out of control anyway. Maybe this hiatus can be used to spotlight the thousands of unnecessary positions when it is clear there has been only positive effects of their absence.
I wonder how much agreement there would be between the average US citizen and the US federal government over “essential”.
There are so many departments we don’t need, or actually do more harm than help. HUD is a good example, actually hurting poor more than they help – however, try to zero out HUD and every paper would chime together how much you hate the poor. Department of Education is the same. It doesn’t help pay for education, that happens for the most part at the state level, but try to zero it out, and you hate the kids.
EPA has lived long past its useful life – but try to eliminate it, or reduce its scope significantly and you hate the planet, (or are an evil dirty greedy corporatist)
etc, etc, etc, etc
Did they use a GCM to get this figure?
Seems like they vastly overestimated the coefficient of necessity here….