Busy Period Ahead, then Long Break

Congress is back at work from a one-week break with four more working weeks scheduled before taking its annual August recess, which this year will extend to September 9. Over the next four weeks legislators plan to continue moving annual appropriations bills for the fiscal year that starts in October. Those bills among other things will determine whether agencies will continue to be subject to belt-tightening sequestration in the upcoming fiscal year. Many agencies have warned that the steps they have taken to avoid or limit furloughs of employees in the current year –such as shifting funds, deferring maintenance, equipment purchases, training and other regular operating expenses — have reached their limits and that the situation in the upcoming year will be worse unless financial relief comes through. The White House has said that the House spending bill covering Agriculture, for example, could trigger furloughs there—in particular, among food inspectors, who avoided threatened furloughs earlier when money was reprogrammed. The spending bills progressing in the Senate generally are more generous than those of the House, and already there is an expectation that few if any of the regular 12 appropriation bills will be enacted into law by the end of September. The likely result would be reliance on an often-used strategy of extending current spending authority temporarily—which in this case, would mean continuing agency operations at post-sequester levels.