WASHINGTON — No one answered the tax-help hotline at the IRS on Friday. And you could forget about getting advice on avoiding foreclosures at the 80 Housing and Urban Development field offices nationwide.
It was “furlough Friday.” Roughly 5 percent of the federal workforce — 115,000 people at six major agencies — were told not to show up as the government dealt with the effects of the sequestration spending cuts.
The across-the-board budget reductions, the result of Washington’s failure to work out a long-term, deficit-cutting plan in November 2011, essentially shut down some government agencies, although it had a negligible impact on others.
The IRS, embroiled in a scandal over agents targeting Tea Party groups, got a day of quiet. Its offices were closed with more than 90,000 employees furloughed Friday, one of five days the agency plans to shut down this year to save money.
HUD furloughed nearly its entire staff of more than 8,400 employees, closed the agency’s headquarters in Washington and shut down about 80 field offices.
Furloughs also hit the Labor Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Interior Department.
