Congress Returning to Unfinished Business

Congress returns from its summer recess next week to a full plate of unfinished business, starting with the need to fund federal agencies past the September 30 ending date of the current fiscal year. There has been speculation of a repeat of the partial government shutdown of October 2013, which put hundreds of thousands of federal employees on unpaid furlough for two weeks. Much more common in similar situations when the regular appropriations bills have not been passed is to extend current spending authority for a period of weeks or months to buy more time. Another complication this year is that sequestration-level spending limits are set to take effect in October, after two years in which political leaders worked around those caps, set by an earlier budget accord and which triggered widespread furloughs of federal employees in the spring and summer of 2013. While employees later were paid for the shutdown furlough time regardless of whether they actually had worked, there was no back pay for the sequester furloughs. It’s unknown whether there might be a repeat of sequester furloughs and if so, when and how extensive. Agencies already are warning of cutbacks they would have to impose to live within sequester spending levels and in some cases even if current funding levels were continued longer-term. Yet another complication is that during the fall leaders will need to raise the federal debt limit, an event that commonly is used as leverage in budgetary negotiations. The limit technically was passed months ago, but the government has been using several financial maneuvers, including one involving the TSP’s government securities G fund, to remain solvent for the meantime. Money freed up by those measures is projected to run out in late November.