Congress Finds a Way Around Federal Furloughs

When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in April that 12,000 employees would have to take four days off without pay this year, Republican Representative Frank Wolf made sure that wasn’t going to happen. The agency that runs the National Weather Service needed to shave $17.5 million from its budget to comply with the across-the-board federal spending cuts known as sequestration. Wolf, whose Virginia district is home to many federal workers, thought it was crazy to sideline storm-tracking meteorologists at the start of what looked to be a devastating tornado season. “Your people are your most valuable resource,” he says. “I told them, ‘Find the money. And if you can’t find the money, I’ll tell you where to find it.’ ”

They found the money. Just before midnight on June 7—a week after tornadoes ravaged Oklahoma—NOAA chief Kathryn Sullivan e-mailed employees to say there’d be no furloughs. The agency told Congress it would pay employees by delaying construction of weather-monitoring ships and taking funds from programs to improve hurricane forecasting.