Government Shutdown Passes Unnoticed, Raising Uncomfortable Questions

Congressional leaders announced Tuesday that a potential government shutdown had been narrowly averted through a last-minute continuing resolution, an announcement that was somewhat undercut by the simultaneous discovery that the government had already been shut down for three weeks in November without anyone noticing. The November shutdown, triggered by a lapsed appropriations bill that was accidentally filed in the wrong committee's inbox, affected 14 federal departments and furloughed approximately 40,000 employees. None of them appear to have been missed. 'We sent everyone home on November 4th,' said Office of Management and Budget Director Carol Sequester. 'The phones kept ringing, the emails kept arriving, and the automated systems kept running. Nobody called to ask where anyone was. It was, frankly, a little hurtful.' The shutdown was only discovered in December when a payroll clerk noticed that 40,000 employees had not been paid for three weeks and none had complained. 'In retrospect, that should have been the first clue,' Sequester admitted. An internal review found that during the shutdown period, the affected departments' key performance metrics remained unchanged. Customer satisfaction scores held steady. Processing times for permit applications did not increase. The Department of Regulatory Compliance's approval rate actually improved by 12 percent, an anomaly attributed to the fact that nobody was there to reject anything. 'The numbers are what they are,' said Government Accountability Office analyst Derek Metric. 'We're not saying these departments are unnecessary. We're saying that when they disappeared for three weeks, the measurable impact was zero, and the public's experience of interacting with the federal government was statistically identical. Draw your own conclusions.' The affected departments have resumed operations. Several have formed committees to demonstrate their value. The committees have requested additional funding.