With just 17% of the federal government shutdown, one has to wonder if beer inspectors are considered “non-essential”, and, if so, why we need them in the first place
(USA Today) The federal government shutdown is giving some folks one more reason to cry in their beers: An obscure but powerful arm of the Treasury Department has stopped approving new brews.
All new beers that get bottled or canned to be sold across state lines must be approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, known in the industry as the TTB. Federal workers must approve the label, as well as the recipe if it uses non-traditional ingredients, which many seasonal beers contain.
While the TTB as stopped approving new recipes and labels, workers there are still collecting brewery taxes.
Got that? No approvals, but still collecting taxes. Kinda like this
(CBS News) Nearly 36,000 employees who work for the Federal Bureau of Prisons across the country have to work during the government shutdown in order to “protect human life and property,” including the ones in Yankton.
“Basically, we are working right now on an IOU for the government, and we have families to support. We have bills to pay, and we’re expected to be here,” American Federation of Government Employees Local 4040 Union President Michele Kunkel said.
But while workers are going without paychecks, inmates at the prison are not.
“There’s a different funding for them,” Kunkel said of the inmates who are getting paid for the jobs they do while in custody.
That’s right: we continue to pay federal prisoners (why we would pay them in the first place is idiotic).
