With less than a week left in the current fiscal year, Congress still
has passed none of the regular appropriations bills needed to fund
agencies for the budget year starting October 1, with various possible
approaches to addressing the need to prevent agency shutdowns still on
the table. Temporary authority to continue spending could be enacted for
a fairly short time or until early in 2009, depending on how long
Congress stays in session before leaving for the elections and whether
leaders call a post-election session. Such a measure could be structured
in any of a number of ways, which would determine how Congress will
handle policy issues such as the January 2009 federal pay raise and
numerous employment-related provisions written into the spending bills.
Leaders also still hope to finalize a DoD authorization bill now that
the Senate has passed its version (S-3001); both versions contain language
affecting the DoD workplace including a provision that the White House
had threatened to veto imposing a moratorium on new contracting out
studies at DoD.