Congress has returned to work in a new alignment, with Republicans now controlling the House and with a larger presence in the Senate, facing many of the same issues that were before the prior Congress, in particular large annual deficits. One of the first orders of business will be to revisit the budget for the fiscal year that is now more than four months gone. The prior Congress passed only a series of stopgap measures generally keeping spending at fiscal 2010 levels, the latest of which expires March 4. The new leadership has vowed to make reductions in spending to bring it to 2008 levels, although how that would be done and the potential effects on federal employees are unknown. Also in the mix will be the need to raise the government’s debt ceiling around the same time, an event that commonly leads to budgetary brinksmanship.