THE BUDGET STALEMATE : Crisis Fails to Slow U.S. Money Presses

The budget dispute may have closed two-thirds of the Cabinet agencies, stopped the paychecks of federal workers and led to the closure of national parks, but rest assured, the problem is not a shortage of money.

There is still $389 billion in greenbacks circulating around the world--13 times more than was in circulation 40 years ago--and every day $353 million in crisp new bills rolls off government printing presses. That is about twice the annual budget of the African nation of Djibouti.

“Crisis?” said Thomas Ferguson, assistant director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. “For us it’s as though the crisis didn’t happen. The government may be out of money, but we’re still printing lots of it.”

Indeed, the business of making the nation’s money hasn’t taken a hit at all in the 19-day partial government shutdown: No layoffs, no furloughed workers, no lost shifts or reduced production, thanks to congressional passage and presidential signature on the Treasury Department’s appropriations bill.

Wednesday, while State Department employees protested the shutdown in front of their headquarters, about 50 tourists gathered at the bureau. Tour guide Kendhe Deligny greeted them and led them into the bowels of the building where pallets were stacked with $6.4 million each, in just-off-the-press, plastic-wrapped packets of $100 bills.

“I was wondering if you’d be open,” a tourist from Illinois said. “The Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial, everything else we’ve tried [has] been closed.”

“Oh, sure,” Deligny replied. “We never close.”

Which is no exaggeration. With a payroll of 1,800, the bureau works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, churning out money--ordered by the Federal Reserve System a year in advance--on 14 high-speed presses. Currency is also printed at the Western Currency Facility in Fort Worth which operates two shifts, five days a week.

It is a recession-proof, foolproof business whose product line of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 bills keeps expanding by about 4% each year.