Stopgap funding expires March 1 for agencies covered under spending bills for Energy, HUD, Transportation, VA and related agencies. A second deadline of March 8 applies to other agencies. Image: Nicole Glass Photography/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffUPDATED: The House has joined the Senate in recessing without having addressed either regular spending bills or another temporary funding measure, leaving Congress just several working days ahead of the first of two upcoming deadlines to prevent a partial government shutdown.
Stopgap funding expires March 1 for agencies covered under spending bills for Energy, HUD, Transportation, VA and related agencies. A second deadline of March 8 applies to other agencies.
The House had planned to stay out of session until March 5, past the first deadline, but now plans to return on February 28. The Senate plans to return from its recess February 26. While Congress can act within a matter of days to pass temporary spending, that short time frame raises the odds that at least the agencies affected by the first deadline will face a partial shutdown of at least several days.
A longer and wider-spread shutdown can’t be ruled out, given the lack of progress on agency-level spending and policy decisions for the fiscal year that started last October. Since then, agencies generally have been funded at 2023 levels despite changing needs in that time.
The sequence also raises the prospect that the fiscal 2024 budget process will overlap the start of the process for fiscal 2025, which is set to begin March 11 with release of the White House budget proposal. That proposal traditionally has been issued in early February but in recent years it has been delayed, in part due to delays in resolving the budget for the fiscal year already well under way.
Among the major issues for federal employees in the annual budget proposal is the recommendation for the following January’s raise. Employee unions are now holding their annual legislative weeks in Washington where they are pushing for a 7.4 percent increase proposed by several Democrats in Congress active in federal workplace issues. President Biden however each year has recommended a figure generated by a federal pay law—which in turn Congress has accepted each year through silence—which for 2025 is 4.5 percent.
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