Public’s Fury Rises Quickly as Doors Slam

By the busloads, tourists young and old from all over the country confronted a federal government out of business in the nation’s capital on Saturday--and plenty of them didn’t like it.

“Where can I go to picket?” asked Jeff Runz, a visitor from Pottersville, N.J., as he stood outside the National Air and Space Museum, which stood closed in the face of the government shutdown resulting from the budget deadlock between Congress and the White House.

“We’re ready to start a protest,” Runz said, as his wife, Karen, and three children sat on the front steps of the nation’s most popular museum. “This is so Mickey Mouse.”

Despite the glorious, summer-like day, many other visitors seemed to share in such sentiments as they found the art galleries, museums and shrines on the National Mall closed.

“People are mad--fighting mad, and I mean it,” said Fred Peterson, a burly Smithsonian Institution guard who stood sentry in front of a darkened Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Across the nation, taxpayers got a first, sour taste of government cutbacks and grumbled about what might close next after the long holiday weekend was over.

The first to feel the pinch were tourists locked out of everything from the Statue of Liberty to the White House. But come Tuesday a whole range of federal services long taken for granted--from weather prediction to border inspection and even air traffic control--were in doubt.

That uncertainty left many people fuming about what they called the cowardice and ineptness of the leaders they had elected to office. “The bottom line is: here we are saying to the Soviet Union that we have a better system . . . and we can’t achieve fiscal responsibility at the government level,” complained Daniel Yanosky, an accountant in Marietta, Ga. “That’s pitiful.”

President Bush and the 535 members of the House and Senate remained deadlocked over the outline of a tax and spending plan to run the government for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. If the stalemate continues into Tuesday, when 2.4 million federal employees across the country are due to return from the Columbus Day weekend, all but those considered “essential” would be sent home.

Such a move could further incite public outrage, warned John N. Sturdivant, head of the American Federation of Government Employees. “If our people get sent home on Tuesday, we’re going to tell them not to go home, but to go to the White House and protest,” Sturdivant threatened.

Paul Denham, an assistant administrator at the Department of Health and Human Services regional office in Denver, said federal workers are bitter. “The feeling is that it’s out of our hands, but we’re being made to pay for it,” he said.

Roy Givens, a ranger at the 800,000-acre Big Bend National Park in Texas, agreed. “Morale here is very low,” said Givens, part of a skeleton crew of park workers kept on only to tend to emergencies. “We’ve all got families to support and to be sent home without pay when we are physically able to work is very hard to accept. . . . This is really going to hurt us.”

Aggravating public frustration was a sense that the pain would not be shared by those most responsible for creating it. “Tell (the President) to take the congressmen’s limousines and the senator’s limousines and make them drive their own cars,” suggested a tourist in Atlanta, locked out of a national monument to Martin Luther King. “ . . . They’re giving (themselves) raises. That makes me mad.”

In Washington, most tourists were clearly surprised to find the museums closed. And when they learned that the closings resulted from the White House-Congress stalemate over a new federal budget, many criticized all sides unstintingly.

“Our government at work!” rasped Norman Benito, owner of a Santa Cruz mortuary. “Our representatives--they should think more about the people.”

“We’re fed up,” said Michael Camporeale, a Mount Vernon, Pa., assistant scoutmaster who had hoped to take his 27 charges for a tour of the White House. “Can’t we sweet-talk them?” Paul Grassi, 11, asked his leader, referring to the no-nonsense White House guards.

“Imagine it, the White House--closed. It’s really disappointing,” said Anne Andrews, who was escorting a group of 23 senior citizens from Salem, Va. “It’s terrible,” added Lois Hurdle, one of the women in the group.

Group members, bearing a letter from their congressman, had expected a VIP tour of the executive mansion. Instead, they clustered around Michael Mathews, their Insider Tour guide, on the sidewalk in front of the White House, straining to hear his talk.

“You only get to see five rooms in there anyway,” Mathews told them.

Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said White House layoffs, should they take effect, would slice the payroll from 383 workers to only 65, mostly guards, Secret Service agents and top policy staffers. Despite the cash crunch, however, Bush hinted that one apparently essential White House function might escape the budget ax: presidential campaign trips.

Asked whether he would cancel a Monday swing through North Carolina, Georgia and Florida to stump for Republicans, Bush told reporters: “I don’t know. I’ve got to cancel everything that has to do with the government, I guess, but . . . maybe that’s a good chance to get out there in the political process.”

Despite the impasse, it was business as usual for many government services that would normally be operating on weekends. But, blaming budget problems, the White House pulled the plug on its “comment line,” possibly scuttling what had the potential to be a record talley of calls from the public.

Predictably, that didn’t go over very well on Capitol Hill, where members such as Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-Ohio) seemed to take umbrage at the implication that Congress might be to blame. “That’s an outrage,” she said on hearing of the shutdown. “It’s time the President heard from the American people. Open the White House line--override the veto.”

Anyone who called one of dozens of park service facilities across the country got a recording, such as this one played in St. Louis: “The Gateway Arch and the Old Courthouse facilities are closed pending the approval of the federal budget.”

Still, air traffic controllers continued to direct a full schedule of planes across the nation’s skies. And meteorologists at the National Hurricane Center in Miami promised that nothing would hinder their ability to track dangerous storms, such as Hurricane Klaus that was downgraded to a tropical storm Saturday after skittering across a wide swatch of the Caribbean.

There was confusion, though, about how these services might be affected later in the week. For example, as “essential” workers, air traffic controllers might be exempted from cutbacks. However, significant delays or cancellations of flights could still develop if the National Weather Service was forced to furlough some of its forecasters.

“If there is no one available to take surface weather observations, let’s say at Orlando International Airport, then we can’t make a terminal forecast, meaning no flights could go there,” explained Paul Hebert, meteorologist in charge of the Weather Service office in Miami.

So far, such a prospect doesn’t appear to have deterred many travelers, said Dexter Koehl, a spokesman for Carlson Travel Cos., one of the nation’s largest travel agencies. Koehl said airline ticket sales have remained fairly stable over the last few weeks, unaffected by widely reported talk of flight delays. Similarly, most air cargo services seemed to be planning a weekend of business as usual.

Meanwhile, a scattered range of federal services prepared to curtail operations over the next few days, even though some of the actions might seem to be self-defeating for a government starved for cash.

For instance, the Federal Reserve system, which had scheduled a sale of three-month and six-month treasury bonds on Tuesday, will not hold the auction without a new budget, said Sandra Conlan, a spokeswoman for the Reserve’s Los Angeles Branch.

Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers James Gerstenzang, Ronald J. Ostrow and David Lauter in Washington, special correspondent Mike Clary in Miami and researchers Tracy Shryer in Chicago, Ann Rovin in Denver, Lianne Hart in Houston and Edith Stanley in Atlanta.

THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN Agencies and services affected over the holiday weekend. WHAT’S OPERATING Operation Desert Shield Air Traffic controllers Postal Service Amtrak National parks (limited services) Uniformed military personnel Key Pentagon support personnel Federal prison guards Meat and poultry inspectors Customs agents National Aeronautics and Space Administration U.S. Weather Service National Hurricane Center Veterans Administration hospitals Medical institution personnel Secret Service agents White House guards White House senior staff Lincoln and Jefferson memorials Arlington National Cemetery National Zoo Mount Vernon WHAT’S NOT Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Washington Monument Library of Congress Smithsonian museums and galleries White House tours Liberty Bell Independence Hall St. Louis Arch Vanderbilt Mansion Franklin Delano Roosevelt home Farmers Home Administration offices Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service