Any of you .Gov types personally feeling the pinch?

[mtnbkr]

Disappointing. I'll have to skip on the books to keep my fantasy alive!

That's not to say he's a bad guy, just not Ron, something he goes through some effort to point out. In many ways he's way left of the typical gun owner and does mock the NRA and the gun lobby a bit, but in many other ways he's more in line with us than you'd think. He's very much a "do it yourself" kind of guy and strives for decency in how he treats others. His book on woodworking is worth a read if you have the slightest inclination to work in that medium.

Chris

[JRB]

It's one of those "I read it somewhere" things and I don't remember where I read it. All my time directly employed by my rich uncle was in the Army, and I don't recall being asked about my political affiliation either.

I've been in and out of a lot of Federal workplaces and made small talk with a lot of other .gov folks.

There's a very real PC-culture sort of thing that applies across the board when you're 'feeling out' someone new or trying not to make waves as the new guy in a building. That PC-culture sort of thing could easily be described as left-leaning if not totally left. I imagine it causes for mistaken ID on political beliefs or affiliation.

Get most of us away from the flagpole, though, and we're talking about guns and fast cars and metal concerts and all that kind of stuff. Especially among Fed civilians that are prior service or in the Reserve/National Guard. And there's a lot of prior service in these positions because of the hiring strategies that focus on deployed veterans.

That said, I've never once been asked straight up about political affiliations by anyone. Even when four of us piled into a POV to go to vote this past Nov and take our ~2hrs voting leave, the conversation there and back was very deliberately apolitical.

[HCM]

Have you ever read anything he's written (I have, two books' worth)? He's NOT Ron Swanson.

Chris

Not even close. Liberal democrat. Claims he was a "hunter" but supports gun control.

The scotch / steak/ carpentry are him in real life but otherwise he is a mirror image of Ron Swanson.

[RevolverRob]

I am PI on my grant. Based on the structure of the funding request in the grant, I am surprised they NIH would disburse money on a monthly basis. Funds are requested in a fairly strictly itemized list of annual expenses. e.g.

NIH typically sends the total amount to the institution, but again it's institutionally dependent. In this case it doesn't matter, because NIH can still disburse funds to the institution. Even though F31s have you as the PI, they require a sponsor. One of the core components to receiving an F31 is that your sponsor(s) already have existing funding in place. In other words, NIH gives F31s under the pretext that your sponsor has additional funds to cover your needs beyond the F31. I applied to F31 and was denied because my sponsor had no existing money.

To my knowledge, the NIH won't cover 100% of your tuition anyway (I had to re-submit my tuition/fees breakdown after the bounced my first one for requesting 100% tuition support) so at least some portion will need to be covered by your PI or a TAship.

Right. That's why you need a sponsor to cover additional funding needs.

Also, I don't really know of many institutions/programs that cover student funding costs independent of NIH (or other grant-based) funding (Mayo Graduate School is the only exception that comes to mind). As an MD PhD student at U Colorado, my first two years (MD) were covered by our program's NIH MSTP T32 training grant, first ~9 months of PhD came out of my PI's R01, and I have been funded by my F31 since (with ~15% of my overall costs still coming out of my PI's R01). The only 'institutional' (non-NIH awarded) money that will pay for my education will be MSTP program funding to cover my last year or 2 of med school once my F31 is up.

Not saying you're necessarily wrong, but it doesn't ring true with my experience, and I've been funded continuously by the NIH in one way, shape, or form since September 2013 (Post-bac R01 supplement for 2 years at Mayo Clinic before moving to CO) so this isn't my first gov't shutdown while on the Fed's dime.

You're in a unique position being an MD-PhD student. PhD students in STEM are often guaranteed 5-years of funding. Awards that students get offset the institution's investment, but student support is rarely wholly (or even partly) contingent upon receiving external funding. There is no statement about how those 5 years of funding are provided (i.e. a combination of TAs and RAs usually).
_____

So, it does appear I was wrong about NIH and DOD, they are funded through Sept, due to having their appropriations bill approved. The individual I thought was on NIH is actually on NSF. NSF on the other hand is frozen along with NASA and a number of other programs (FDA and partial freezing of funds from DOE).

A number of people funded via NSF/NASA/agencies with funds not currently appropriated are hanging in the balance right now. When the shutdown ends, it is unclear if they will receive the awards they should have received (probably) or if their funding window expired during this time, they may not receive the funds at all, it is also unclear if funding windows will be extended.

Another thing to note - Government shutdowns rarely affect grad students. They most directly affect post-doctoral researchers and anyone who may be hired as contract labor under a grant (i.e., staff, not otherwise supported directly by the institution).

It also is not affecting everyone equally. My current institution administers all funds directly and requests full annual amounts. So, at least here, regardless of funding agency, 12-months of funding was requested in Sept. '18 and people will continue to get paid and move forward. My previous institution did not request 12-months of funding, but instead requested funding based on academic-term increments, this seems to be a common practice for some institutions. It is very institutional-dependent.

[jetfire]

My federal position is funded so that's not an issue. My friends in the Coast Guard are starting to get nervous because if something doesn't change real quick they're probably not going to get paid on the 15th, and that would suck a big fat dick. Apparently CG families are getting told to have yard sales and take up driving Uber to help makes end meet.

[JDD]

My bureau is funded through sometime early February, and I’m still even getting paid my OT. So, we haven’t really felt it yet.

Another aspect to consider are federally funded state level programs. My wife works for a state, and they’re 50/50 funded between state tax and federal. They’re good until August, but I bet there’s state agencies looking at some serious issues already if their state funding isn’t as robust.

Really? The guidance they pushed out specifically stated that we have to take our OT hours as LEAP. Given that I am sitting at a 2.87 LEAP average, I am feeling pretty feisty about that one.

Financially I am ok for a good amount of time, mostly because I stopped my automatic payments into my index funds around the first set of trade war headlines last year, so I have a pretty solid pile of cash on hand above and beyond my emergency fund.

On an operational level, we are going to be in a really bad place as soon as some of the pots of money that we have start running out. A number of my key staff are contractors who will be paid, right up to the point where their obligated funding runs out. I also have a separate group of 350 staff who literally live paycheck to paycheck, and if the pot of money they are paid out of runs out, there will literally be people dying because we could not come through on our obligations.

[TGS]

Really? The guidance they pushed out specifically stated that we have to take our OT hours as LEAP.

"Prudent OT" or whatever the language was. Regular CS/FS are being told to claim comp-time, but the guidance is that special agents aren't allowed to use comp-time in lieu of for anything but travel, and that it must instead be claimed as LEAP. However the way it was written doesn't preclude the use of OT at management's discretion, though.

Basically, anything my office does is still paid OT (via WSP funding), especially since there's various carve-outs for operations in support of who we're working for....I imagine it might differ for your assignment. Anything that is claimed as LEAP won't be back-paid as OT, either, so I'd refrain from doing such for fear of complicating the submission of a supplemental timesheet to claim OT once this is all over.

If we were working LEAP sandwiches, there'd be some serious heartburn....at least at my office. I haven't seen the new 2019 LEAP tracker spreadsheet/timesheet, so if you have it email it to me because I need to get my hours down on paper......I'm guessing by the end of January I will be at 120 hours of OT + 30 hours of comp-time just for January alone.

[Drang]

{Cher} hasn't been a relevant celebrity for the majority of my natural life

That was actually part of my point, I guess I should give up attempts at subtlety.

My friend tells me that they certified their time sheets last week, because, why wouldn't you? Well, because someone was supposed to tell you not to. She said there were all kinds of dire predictions, and I pointed out that the ones making the predictions were the ones who probably should have made sure that they knew not to, so don't sweat it. (Easy for me to say...)

[JDD]

"Prudent OT" or whatever the language was. Regular CS/FS are being told to claim comp-time, but the guidance is that special agents aren't allowed to use comp-time in lieu of for anything but travel, and that it must instead be claimed as LEAP. However the way it was written doesn't preclude the use of OT at management's discretion, though.

Basically, anything my office does is still paid OT (via WSP funding), especially since there's various carve-outs for operations in support of who we're working for....I imagine it might differ for your assignment. Anything that is claimed as LEAP won't be back-paid as OT, either, so I'd refrain from doing such for fear of complicating the submission of a supplemental timesheet to claim OT once this is all over.

If we were working LEAP sandwiches, there'd be some serious heartburn....at least at my office. I haven't seen the new 2019 LEAP tracker spreadsheet/timesheet, so if you have it email it to me because I need to get my hours down on paper......I'm guessing by the end of January I will be at 120 hours of OT + 30 hours of comp-time just for January alone.

This also sticks in my craw. We have had a pretty substantial disruption to operations, particularly travel and a number of other extremely high priority programs. The idea that there are carve outs for some things, especially with where I am, and the fact that we are 50% under strength pisses me off (the shutdown is also delaying the arrival of any new staff). Combine that with what will happen here when the transferable funding that we have been instructed to use with extreme judiciousness runs out, and it becomes downright rage inducing.

2019 leap year does not start for a few more months, so no new spreadsheet just yet.

[RJ]

I am not in .gov, but all my current projects (and most of my company's annual $4B revenue) is with .gov, mostly DoD.

So far, I've not seen any impact from what I do (I'm a middle level engineering Cat-Herder), which ranges anywhere from interacting with local .gov and .mil supporting my Prime Contractor to getting parts to getting access to .gov facilities both CONUS and OCONUS.