Besides the omnibus budget package, Congress is dealing with a few other issues this week, like postal reform. But it’s a short week, as the Federal Drive with Tom Temin learned from Bloomberg Government Deputy News Director Loren Duggan.

Tom Temin: Loren, the omnibus packages that are coming forth to be voted on sometime during this week, presumably to get to the President’s desk, they have to finish those votes this week before they go on recess. So tell us what the schedule for that would look like.

Loren Duggan: Right. So this omnibus package is going to be the top priority in the House and the Senate this week, trying to fund the government for fiscal 2022, which, as we know, started Oct. 1, but there have been delays over time, and everything has been operating under a continuing resolution. So it may be a heavy lift to get this through both chambers by Friday night at midnight, going into Saturday. So the House and Senate leadership are going to be working their members, trying to figure out the way to get this through as they digest everything that’s in a package that covers every agency in the federal government that’s covered by appropriations. So the House will likely go first, because their week is truncated. As you mentioned, they’re only here through about Wednesday afternoon. And then all of the Democrats are headed up to Philadelphia for their annual retreat, which is the first one, by the way, they’ve done in-person in a long time. And hopefully for them, they’ll have this feather in their cap of passing a government funding package. It would then go over to the Senate where as we know, things can happen really quickly or they can be dragged out. So one of the goals in the House will be to get this over to them with enough time in the Senate to process it, get over any procedural hurdles, and try to get it to [President Joe] Biden by the end of Friday, so he can keep the government open in the weekend.

Tom Temin: All right. So House Democrats would rather be in Philadelphia. What are the Republicans doing while the Democrats are in Philadelphia? Do they go to Florida or something?

Loren Duggan: They may go there. But often they’ll go back home and meet with their constituents and do the normal work there. The parties do this. It’s a tradition for them to take a break at some point early in the year to go and do some planning for the rest of the year. The Democrats had hoped to do this in February, [but] postponed it because of COVID. And now they’re getting really together in person and doing this for the first time. So we’ll see what comes out of that, if they have any bold announcements that they’ll want to make. On the Senate side, they are taking Wednesday off to do a similar thing. The Senate Democrats and the Senate Republicans will meet separately in town. They’ll be back then for votes on Thursday, presumably, and probably dealing with this omnibus package still, just based on how much time it can take to process it.

Tom Temin: Got it. And one of the things in the State of the Union speech that got a lot of play by the President was still pushing the Build Back Better business. Would that be perhaps part of the Democratic agenda, that Build Back Better bill? Or do you think they spend their time figuring out how to make sure they get reelected a few months from now?

Loren Duggan: I’ve long maintained that the idea of a budget reconciliation bill, which is the process they were trying to use to push Build Back Better, remains alive, because it’s a vehicle that you only need 50 votes to get through the Senate. So maybe it’s not the broad sweeping, as-it-was out of the House, $1.75 trillion spending package that had some offsets. But maybe there’s a smaller menu of things that Democrats can pull out of that, whether it’s the climate change provisions, or some of the family-oriented things that the President talked about, like child care payments or additional child tax credit, something like that. If they can find a package of spending or tax credits that are money going out, rather than bringing money in, and then also have enough offsets to make it a package that somebody like Joe Manchin is happy with, maybe with some deficit reduction as well as offsetting some of the new spending or new initiatives that are in there, there may be a path forward for something. Whether they call it build Back Better or calling it — I forget, he used a phrase like Building for America or something in his speech like that. So elements of this remain alive. They talked about chunking it up at the end of last year going into this year. So I think the Democrats will talk, see what they can do. The House Democrats have already done their part, as far as they’re concerned. It’s what can get through the Senate, what can get 50 Democrats plus Kamala Harris on board. So I think that agenda is alive. But that may not happen this week. Maybe a couple of weeks or even months into the future.

Tom Temin: We are speaking with Loren Duggan, deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. And what about the postal reform, because that seemed promising, that it would finally get pushed over the line? What’s the status there?

Loren Duggan: It could go over the line this week. There’s been a lot of bipartisanship for that in both chambers. The House passed a bill, sent it over. There was a little hiccup on the technical side that kept the Senate from doing it before they went on a recess recently. But they’re doing a cloture vote tonight. If they can get 60 senators for that it’ll be teed up for a vote on final passage. Provided there’s no changes between now and that passage vote, it would head to the President’s desk. And this would be a pretty significant change for the post office. A lot of it deals with this pre-funding requirement they’ve had for healthcare and shifting away from that, and also allowing them to do some additional things to raise revenue. So it is a rare piece of bipartisan legislation. That’s a pretty big deal. It’s not universally supported, because if it were they wouldn’t have needed all these cloture votes and procedural steps. But I think there could be a win here for folks who have looked to fix the Postal Service or elements of it for a long time.

Tom Temin: All right. I wanted to ask you, there’s been a lot of talk, certainly the war in Ukraine focused a lot of people in Congress on that, and there was demonstrations of that during the State of the Union. Is there anything Congress will be preoccupied with? Otherwise, it’s doesn’t sound like there’s a lot they can do. Because obviously, the United States is not at war, and is not planning to declare war there.

Loren Duggan: Well, they are wing and had to weigh this request from the administration for $10 billion to use to help with operations. As the President made clear, he’s not sending troops into Ukraine, but he is thinking about what do we do to shore up other parts of Europe, where we do have alliances — particularly NATO — and guarantees. If there’s an invasion of a NATO country, we are supposed to come to the rescue there and be part of any sort of military action there. So they will be looking at that; they will undoubtedly be thinking more about sanctions. They had talked about sanctions legislation before the invasion. Now that it’s happened, they could be looking at that again. The administration obviously has a lot of powers it’s already used to sanction government institutions and individuals in Russia, but I wouldn’t be surprised that there’s still a push to do more on that front: hold hearings, see what’s happened. So Ukraine is going to remain in the headlines. And it’s also going to remain top of mind for Congress. There’s also a lot of talk right now about China and what to do there and concerns about Taiwan. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we kept hearing more about that. There’s legislation pending to deal with competition with China. So foreign policy is in the minds of a lot of people in Congress as they weigh all this domestic stuff as well, like government spending and things like the Build Back Better reconciliation package.

Tom Temin: Also, just before the State of the Union, the President got some nominees through the Senate. It was kind of an odd, late-minute vote and they put it out on Twitter and the cloakroom account. Strange, but there were two assistant Defense Secretaries, there were two members of the Merit Systems Protection Board — third one to-go; that one’s in limbo — and a few others. Will there be more of that? Do you think some more quick confirmation votes to get some of these nominations cleared?

Loren Duggan: They’re always chipping away at this. It’s often what feels time on the floor when they’re waiting for other things like an omnibus to come over. This week, we might see a deputy U.S. trade representative confirmed, and we may see the head of ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — go through. So that’s on the floor side. And then the hearings are continuing in committees and markups as well of those nominations. Some of the higher profile ones have been held up; if you’ve been paying attention to the Fed nominees, both Chairman [Jerome] Powell for another term as chairman and then other members of the Board of Governors, those have been stuck because Republicans have boycotted the votes, and nothing can happen if you don’t have a majority of the members. So in evenly split committees that’s tied things up. But if they can get those moving, I would see those coming to the floor for a vote soon. And then obviously the marquee nomination right now and the one that the President talked about, as well in the State of the Union is the Supreme Court nominee who started meeting with senators last week. [She] will continue that and head for a hearing and then presumably a markup and floor vote. So nominees are always present, maybe under the surface, and some of them pop up and get confirmed when you least expect it, when these deals open up, especially as events warrant, so that’s always something on our radar.

Tom Temin: Loren Duggan is deputy news director at Bloomberg Government.

Final passage was by a bipartisan 65-27 vote, five more than the 60 votes needed. The House easily approved the legislation last week. Each party had concluded that an election-year shutdown would be politically damaging, especially during a pandemic and a confrontation with Russia over its possible invasion of Ukraine.

Yet as with virtually all must-pass bills, politics hitched a ride. Before passage, conservatives forced votes on amendments including on one of the year’s hot-button issues, COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They were defeated mostly along party lines.

One by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and several colleagues would have blocked existing federal vaccine requirements for the military, government employees and contractors and health care workers. Another by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would have halted federal funds for school districts imposing their own vaccine requirements.

Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., proposed another requiring Congress’ non-binding federal budgets to balance within 10 years.

United Democrats can defeat GOP proposals in the 50-50 Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. But with Harris in Europe and some Democrats missing because of illness or ailing spouses, Democrats prevailed after several Republicans also left for travel or to begin the chamber’s recess.

A separate GOP move to block federal spending on pipes used for crack faded away after the Biden administration said it never planned to do that and would not. The money is part of a program aimed at helping drug abusers avoid hurting themselves further.

Amending the bill would have caused complications because the House is also gone for recess but would have had to pass the revamped version before sending it to Biden.

Without Senate passage of the identical House bill, agencies would have had to stop functioning over the weekend. The legislation will finance government through March 11.

Both parties hope the short-term measure will be the last one needed as negotiators craft compromise bills financing agencies through Sept. 30. Since the government’s budget year began last Oct. 1, federal agencies have functioned at spending levels approved in the waning weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.

The new spending bills will be bipartisan compromises but will let Biden and Democrats controlling Congress put more of a stamp on spending priorities. They also are expected to provide defense increases the GOP wants.

In recent decades Congress has routinely finished its budget work months late. Averting shutdowns prompted by partisan point-scoring has become an accomplishment, not a given.

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Congress bought itself a short month to get together on final appropriations for 2022. Even if they do agree that there’s a deal on March 11, that means 2022 money will arrive nearly halfway through the fiscal year. And even then accounts won’t be ready on the 11th. For contractor and procurement implications, the  Federal Drive with Tom Temin  turned to federal sales and marketing consultant, Larry Allen.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And I don’t know why people are so breathless about the so-called framework. All that meant was another three weeks of continuing resolution, and then maybe they have a deal.

Larry Allen: But Tom, a framework was necessary to have what I call the fixes in, and when you have leadership from the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, negotiating hard for a couple of weeks over getting a framework, the idea now is that all the people who work with them have been instructed, we want a deal. So we’re going to get a deal. We’re gonna get an appropriations bill, an omnibus bill. Anytime you roll all 12 of them together, people, I think, rightly call it an ominous appropriations bill. But we’re going to get one. In the meantime, contractors and government agencies are kind of stuck in second year with having a continuing resolution for another month. So by the time we get a final appropriation, which is you alluded to, probably will come around the march 11, I would hope that would be the deadline day. It’ll be April 15 or so. Hey, there’s something to look forward to on Tax Day, you get your appropriations before each individual office has its money. And that’s really when the fiscal year begins.

Tom Temin: Right, that would be well past the halfway point. And so for contractors, what can they reasonably expect the government to be able to do with that half a fiscal year, even though they might have full year appropriations?

Larry Allen: Well, I think Tom, we can expect to see projects be funded right out of the box, a lot of preliminary work being done right now, everything that can be done without money, and not on all projects. But look, a lot of experienced veterans and federal agencies have told me they’ve got a pretty good idea of what their core funding is going to be. They know what projects they’re going to be able to fund. So for that set of projects, that set of activities, they can proceed up to the point where they need appropriation to actually drop the RFP or RFQ. Contractors can see it and expect to see I think, very frenetic activity, there will also always be some surprises. Congress may fund some things more than agencies expected. They may not fund things at all that agencies thought we’re going to get funds, you know, those are going to be last-minute surprises one way or the other. But the big thing I think that contractors can expect to see is that there really is no way, Tom, that agencies are going to be able to get all the money committed in five and a half months, no matter how quickly people move over, no matter how much advanced work they’ve done, there’s going to be money left on the table. So if you’re a contractor, even more so than in other years, you want to work closely with your customers, to make sure your project gets funded, that you’ve made it as easy as possible for your agency customer to do business with you that way. You get your project through, they get to get their project done, and everybody wins.

Tom Temin: Right. And then money that is unobligated by the end of the year then is in theory gone. And it would have to be reappropriated. And of course, we won’t have appropriations on October 1 of 2022 for the ’23 fiscal year, realistically speaking.

Larry Allen: That’s right. It’s gonna be an election year. And traditionally, in an election year, Congress kicks the bucket down the road until after the November elections. In this case, they’re midterm elections. So I wouldn’t expect to see anything for FY ’23 until December at the earliest. And you’re right, Tom, any money that’s unobligated and that’s the key is obligated to an actual project. If so, then it doesn’t go away when the belt holds on October 1. Otherwise, any obligated money for this year does go away. And agencies can look to Congress for giving them a very, very short runway to get their projects funded and get critical things done.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Business Partners, and a little bit something close to home here. A Court of Federal Claims judge changed some guidance or reversed some guidance with respect to some GAO guidance with respect to contractors who may have lost a deal because prime personnel left during the solicitation and the government was counting on those people as part of their source selection. And now it seems like there’s a little bit more freedom for contractors to lose people and still keep their deals.

Larry Allen: Potentially, Tom, what we’re really talking about here, key personnel for a contractor on professional services contracts. Many of them require companies to put in resumes of actual people, critical personnel who will be dedicated to the project, should the company win. And what happens is, the solicitation goes out, say in February, the award isn’t made until April, maybe there’s a protest, and the project doesn’t really get going until June. Well, between February and June, people might leave the company, they might retire, they might get dedicated to another project. All the GAO rulings to date on that scenario, have taken the contractor to task saying, you bid something and then essentially baited and switched. And the agency has every right to reconduct a procurement if that happened. And now along comes the Federal Claims Court judge saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, let’s apply more a common sense solution to this scenario, companies really can’t be expected and critical people can’t really be expected to freeze in place, while a government agency goes through the process of awarding a contract, and doing all the things it needs to do to issue an authority to operate on that contract. And therefore contractors shouldn’t be done if they lose somebody through retirement or they took another job. They want contractors to have that flexibility there. They’re not giving you as the contractor carte blanche to put together a slate of key personnel just to swap them all out. They’re not saying that. But they are saying, look, we need to understand that time changes things, we need to be aware of that and accommodate it. A couple of the contract lawyers I’ve spoken to on this case, Tom, think that now we have a conflict between at least one claims court judge and GAO. We’re going to end up with a case in federal court that will establish a precedent, one way or the other on this on how you treat your personnel. But for the time being, I think contractors can feel that they’ve at least got some level of flexibility that GAO had not given them before.

Tom Temin: Right. And so for a superior court, a higher court to establish that precedent that would then flow back to GAO, which ultimately makes its decisions based on its best understanding of statute.

Larry Allen: Well, right. In fact, the claims court judge in his decision, said that GAO’s practice seems to be “untethered” from law or regulation. Doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, it just means that GAO kind of created its own precedent. So if you’d get a legal case in a superior court, a district court that sets a precedent that would be something that I think other venues would then look to, to decide future cases. That’s probably really what we’re hoping for now, because there are now some clouds here, depending on venue, and people would like some consistency, but at least they’re clouds that are favorable, I think, to contractors, because, up until now, GAO has been pretty clear that agencies can done companies who promise one slate of people but then for reasons outside of their control, can’t deliver on that by the time the project gets underway.

Tom Temin: Larry Allen is president of Allen Federal Business Partners. Thanks so much.

Larry Allen: Tom, thank you and I wish your listeners happy selling.

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It’s up to the Senate now to vote on a way to avoid a lapse in appropriations Friday, when the current continuing resolution ends. It’s not exactly a route to full 2022 appropriations, but its not disaster. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin got the latest from WTOP’s Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Let’s start with a definition of what they mean by budget framework. Because frameworks can collapse.

Mitchell Miller: Exactly. And it still could collapse. And it’s very tenuous at this point. You know, we’re only four months into the fiscal year, after all, and we actually may soon have a budget for the fiscal year that began way back in October. But right now, it’s still a little bit unclear about, more than a little bit unclear about what this actually means. The appropriators on the House and Senate side were very coy last week when they said yes, we have this tentative agreement, but they really wouldn’t go into any details about what it included. There was some talk about the fact that it will include so-called parity between defense spending and non-defense spending. But other than that, there’s a lot more we need to learn about this. But it does buy them some more time, as we get through with this continuing resolution. Or I should say, the continuing resolution buys them more time of the House passing it last week. So no threat of a government shutdown this Friday, when money was to run out with the CR expected to be extended through March 11. The Senate is likely to vote on that this week.

Tom Temin: Got it. So maybe by the cherry blossoms or something, they’ll have something together.

Mitchell Miller: Right.

Tom Temin: What happens once they pass, if they pass this latest CR, that still only gives them three weeks to do the hard work?

Mitchell Miller: Right. And there’s still a lot of nervousness, frankly, among lawmakers. One of the people that’s kind of nervous about this is Virginia Senator Mark Warner, who wrote to the Office of Management and Budget last week, saying, look, this better come together or a lot of states are going to lose money in connection with the infrastructure funding that is kind of front loaded into this spending plan. And he pointed out that just in Virginia alone, the state could lose more than $350 million for roads and bridges, and more than $50 million in transit funding if this doesn’t get approved. And then, as we’ve talked about in the past, there’s concern among Defense officials that if it doesn’t get approved that a lot of these big programs for training and for weapon systems could also be held up. So there’s still a lot of concern about what’s actually going to happen, even though there was a little bit of a mini celebration last week when the appropriators said yes, we have this general framework.

Tom Temin: Yeah. So more a crack in the ice, if you will, then just the flowing of the dollars just yet.

Mitchell Miller: Exactly.

Tom Temin: All right. And I wanted to ask you about Rep. Connolly of Northern Virginia. He has a large interest had a hearing last week on Metro and some of the safety issues. But there’s another issue with Metro that is coming near, I guess of concern to the Hill, and that is the lack of federal bulk ridership. You know, the people going to work on Metro is just not materializing yet.

Mitchell Miller: Right. And you know, here we are, we’re on the cusp, perhaps of maybe a little bit of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel in connection with the pandemic. But for Metro that tunnel is very, very long right now, because at this hearing last week that Gerry Connolly presided over, they noted that normally, you would get close to 40% of Metro’s ridership during the week from federal workers and they’re nowhere close to that right now. In fact, the Metro general manager, Paul Wiedefeld, said that they are down 70% from pre pandemic levels. So you can imagine what that’s doing to the revenues for Metro and they really need more of these federal workers to get back on the rails and getting back into their offices. And it’s just not happening right now. So that’s a huge fiscal challenge for Metro. They are getting a little bit of increased ridership on the weekends and and some of the off hours, but that doesn’t even come close to replenishing the money that they’ve lost during the pandemic from the loss of federal employees.

Tom Temin: Right, and it could be another month or so, I think, the end of March is when agencies, the earliest ones are thinking about some sort of mass return to the office. And of course, that’s optional. And it still gives another six weeks of low revenue.

Mitchell Miller: Right. And then the other issue is, as you know, Metro is not running at full speed right now because of the derailment that happened last fall. And they’re still reviewing safety issues in connection with the wheels on these 7000 Series rail cars. And so even those people that are riding Metro right now are finding themselves waiting on station platforms for very long periods of time. And Metro officials at this hearing last week acknowledged that really, at the earliest that’s going to get closer to back to normal is maybe in April, but again, there could be delays with that. And when you have federal workers potentially going back to the office, you know, they’re going to be trying to figure out well, how am I going to get back to the office? What if I can’t work rely on Metro to get there in a timely fashion? I was talking to somebody the other day who was just trying to get to the Capitol and they said from one day to the other, it can vary by 30 to 45 minutes. So that makes a big difference when you’re commuting every morning and afternoon.

Tom Temin: Sure, and that intersection of Florida Avenue, New York Avenue and First Street Northeast is still years yet from being fixed.

Mitchell Miller: Right.

Tom Temin: Don’t try to drive that way. We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller, WTOP’s Capitol Hill correspondent. And if all rails lead to Gerry Connolly, so do a lot of other roads. And his hearing on the postal issue of Postal Service delivery is coming up. And that’s as Congress considers a reform bill, that could help the Postal Service financially.

Mitchell Miller: A lot of issues coming up related to the Postal Service, Congressman Connolly today is actually holding a field hearing in Baltimore. And this relates to delivery issues. They have done several reviews showing that the Baltimore area actually has some of the worst delivery service in the country. Just one example. First Class delivery, which is supposed to get to its destination within three to five days, it’s only arriving in the Baltimore area close to 60% of the time, so 40% of the time, you’re likely not to get whatever you want delivered on time, at least through first class delivery. And there have been also problems in the closer-in suburbs here around Washington.

There is some bright news for the Postal Service with this big reform bill that was passed last week by the House and looks like it’s moving forward. As you know, the Postal Service has had major problems with red ink, going back well over a decade, just not being able to pay for itself. And of course, the big reason for that is unlike many other agencies, it has to pay for its retirement funding and health care upfront. And so this completely changes the funding related to the Postal Service, it’s estimated that alone could save the Postal Service over $20 billion over the next decade. And then there are a variety of other areas where they believe that billions of additional dollars will or will be saved. And then as far, and part of that is requiring that Postal Service employees enroll in Medicare, that would cut down on the premium costs. Currently, only about a quarter of retired postal workers actually don’t enroll in Medicare, even though they’re eligible. So that’s a big area of potential savings. And then just for the average person who wonders, well, what’s this mean for my mail service, they are planning under this legislation to continue six day a week service. And then the other big thing is they are going to create an online dashboard, which you will be able to supposedly look at and find out how well your service area, if you live in Baltimore or somewhere else, how well it’s actually doing compared to other parts of the country. So they’re trying to increase the transparency of the Postal Service.

Tom Temin: So you could find out whether that Christmas card your grandmother mailed in 1957 will actually be on the way.

Mitchell Miller: Exactly.

Tom Temin: They said, yeah, it’ll be there Tuesday. And just another issue. Congress has been looking at the Washington Commanders, because the as I recall, they were not in the Super Bowl yesterday. The sexual harassment issue, how does that come before the august body of the Congress, the United States.

Mitchell Miller: Right, a lot of people wonder what is Congress doing investigating the Washington commanders, formerly the Washington Football Team. And it all comes down to workplace issues, as has been documented by the Washington Post and others, there have been major issues in connection with sexual harassment. A lot of issues with women being mistreated within the organization. And so the House Oversight and Reform Committee decided to take the bull by the horns on this issue, and held a hearing last week, which included it wasn’t actually a full blown hearing, it was actually technically a roundtable. So the witnesses were not under oath. But basically, they outlined a lot of these problems. And so now what the House Oversight Committee is trying to do is get the NFL to open up about this investigation that was done in connection with the team because they never actually revealed what was in the report related to the team. We heard a lot of reports in the media about what was in it, but they never actually issued it. And that’s because the report was, oddly enough done in a verbal fashion with the NFL top office. So there’s been a lot of pressure for members of Congress to say, look, we need a lot of transparency on these workplace issues. And then complicating things even more. At this hearing, there was an allegation specifically made against owner Dan Snyder by one of the former employees. That has also set off another mini drama in connection with the NFL and this committee, which really wants to get a lot of the documents related to the investigation.

Believe it or not, there are more than 100,000 outstanding documents in connection with this investigation. The committee is pushing the NFL to release them. The NFL, in turn says, well, we can’t release them because of this complicated legal agreement related to the team and the team actually has to release it. So a lot of big items related to this soap opera involving Washington Commanders, obviously, they have a lot of issues on the field as well, a long way from the Super Bowl for sure. But this is going to be an issue that is going to continue, I think, because you’ll recall that going back to issues with Major League Baseball and steroid use, people sometimes forget that Congress actually has the power to move forward these issues which will otherwise lie dormant because the leagues don’t really want the bad publicity.

Tom Temin: Well, if you want to take down the team and get those papers, don’t grab that bull by the horns necessarily.

Mitchell Miller: No, that’s true. You don’t want to do that.

Senate passage, expected perhaps next week, will send the bill to President Joe Biden for his signature. Without that the government would deplete its spending authority on Feb. 18 and have to shutter most of its doors, an election-year embarrassment that neither party wants, and it will not happen.

The bill includes $350 million to address leaking military fuel tanks that have contaminated drinking water near Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, and nearly 6,000 people have complained of illness. The military has moved around 4,000 families into hotels and flown in water treatment systems from the U.S. mainland.

Tuesday’s House vote was 272-162. All but one voting Democrat supported the bill, but it was opposed by more than 3 in 4 Republicans, who often use such votes to portray themselves as fiscal conservatives.

The short-term measure would fund government at last year’s levels through March 11. Congressional leaders say they hope that will give bargainers time to reach agreement on overall spending totals, and then write the 12 bills that spell out details on how agencies will spend that money.

Those bills finance everything from the armed forces to programs for education, the environment, veterans and public health. In addition, a portion of the 10-year, $1 trillion infrastructure bill — about $14 billion this year — can’t be committed to projects until Congress approves a spending bill formally providing the money.

The government’s budget year runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30. It’s been many years since Congress has finished all its budget bills by Oct. 1 because of partisan fights over priorities.

“No one wins” when Congress has to rely on short-term legislation to finance agencies piecemeal, said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who chairs the House Appropriations Committee. The top Republican on that panel, Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, said that while no one wants another stopgap bill, “the alternative is much worse” — a reference to a federal shutdown.

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The continuing resolution, having now eaten up nearly five months of the fiscal year, is starting to affect the market valuations of publicly traded federal contractors. That may not seem like a concern of the government, but think again. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke to the president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, David Berteau.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: David, what’s going on here? You’re finding that some companies are having talent issues and capital issues because of uncertainty over this whole market?

David Berteau: Tom, there’s two things going on here. And one, I think, who would have thought that we would miss the old sequester budget caps from that were in place from 2012 through 2021. Remember, we were so eager for those to be over with, and then we could go back to regular order? Well, it turns out that having caps also meant you had a floor and you had a starting point for an agreement that you could get full appropriations. We don’t have that anymore. And I think this CR is proving to be a little harder. I know, the government says we know how to operate under a CR. Good grief, they’ve certainly practiced. It’s been 11 out of the last 12 years for every agency. But what we’ve seen in the analyst calls that some of the publicly traded companies, PSC members have had, is the stock market is dinging them, because they’re saying their revenue has not met targets, in large part because the CR has slowed down new awards, which of course it does. In fact, new awards or new efforts are largely prohibited under a CR. Well, why does this matter? Of course, it matters because companies more than ever, are dependent on the financial marketplace for access to capital. And that capital is going to only flow to companies at reasonable rates, if in fact, they’re meeting their objectives, their financial objectives. There’s plenty other places for money to go if it’s not going into government contractors. This is a serious concern, and the government’s not paying much attention to it at all.

Tom Temin: Yeah, the government that says it can operate on a CR is like saying, you know, a runner can operate with a broken leg, but it may not be optimal.

David Berteau: You’re not going to win the race that way, OK.

Tom Temin: Then what does this do to their competitive ability, though, maybe the smaller, more agile contractors can get through this better than the publicly traded ones?

David Berteau: Well, we’re still seeing a good pace of solicitations. In other words, the government’s asking companies to submit bids. But everybody is equally hobbled if the government doesn’t award these contracts. We’re seeing options being exercised, we’re seeing extensions of contracts. But every company large, middle sized and small has to hang on to people that were proposed in a bid. And we’ve asked our member companies, are you seeing an increase in the number of times the government requests you to extend the period of validity through your bid? You know, it’s good up to a certain date? Well, would you extend that for another 90 days? Would you extend up to 180 days? We have some that have been extended over a year now. How do you hang on to your key personnel, when you’re not making money to pay for them? No company large, medium or small can do that.

Tom Temin: And how do you stay with your price bid, when we have wage inflation that’s starting to kick up?

David Berteau: Well, exactly. On top of the difficulty of hanging on in the face of fewer awards, we’re seeing 5%, 6%. In fact, the numbers that came out Friday show about a 6% inflation across the country in wages. This is fine if you’re a manufacturer, and you’ve got built into your contract an escalation clause of 2% or 3% per year, because it’s expected that inflation will hit component parts and suppliers. But for services contracts it’s frequently the opposite. There’s usually an expectation that your learning curve will bring costs down. So you’ve got an expectation of reduced costs and a reality of increased costs. This has got to go somewhere. We’ve actually heard a comment from one federal agency component that said industry will just have to suck it up. Well, Tom, you can’t suck it up when your margins are less than your your wage inflation.

Tom Temin: Yeah, there are legendary contracting officers who said, well, I don’t see why you need to make more than your cost. What do you need profit for as long as you can cover the payroll?

David Berteau: There’s a bit of a lack of understanding of the basic laws of capitalist economics there. You don’t stay in business if you don’t make a profit. And this is back to point one. If the financial marketplace doesn’t think you’re profitable, you’re gonna get squeezed at both ends. Your cost in and your access to capital.

Tom Temin: Better to be Amazon this week than Facebook, I guess. We’re speaking with David Berteau, President and CEO of the Professional Services Council. And interestingly, as we talk about the CR, which expires next weekend, there’s no clear path to a non-extension of the Feb. 18 deadline. We’re bumping up into the signals for the 2023 budget, which is past pass back at this point. And now you know, you’ve got budgets bumping up against budgets.

David Berteau: And as it turns out, Tom, under the budget law, that budget is supposed to be submitted just about now. By the first or second week of February every year. We’re not going to see that. In fact, the reports are that OMB has just issued the pass backs, that is the requirements to agencies to adjust their ’23 budget late last week. So we’re still at least six or eight weeks away from any budget submissions.

But the bigger question is, what does the administration assume for the FY 22 column of an FY 23 Budget? We’ve got nothing but a CR in place. One thing we’re watching for as the Congress debates an extension to the CR this week, is how far out will that extension go? If it goes to mid-March, that’s a sign that we’re getting progress on the deal and may have a full year appropriation to go through the rest of the fiscal year. If it goes out until April and beyond, that’s not a good time. And it says we may be further out. And of course, as you and I had discussed, there’s not only a possibility of CRs for this year, but it will probably extend, as it usually does, into FY 23. And then when the new Congress taking office next January, it could extend well into calendar year 2023. What a disaster that’ll be both for the government and for contractors.

Tom Temin: Yes, because as you point out, normally, the president’s proposal comes out sometime in February. And so if that is delayed to March, or April, or even early May, which is not unheard of, from the White House, then Congress is going to pretty much be done for the year by August, because that’s when they start the tong war for the midterms.

David Berteau: And within the agencies, what this means is, I may have money available under a CR, it’s at the FY 21 level, not the FY 22 proposed budget level. But I don’t know how much I’m going to get or when I’m going to get it for future. So I’m not going to spend, I’m not going to commit all my funds right now, we could run the risk of in fact, existing funds expiring unobligated, even though there’s important work to be done, and the vehicles are there to get it done. This is a bad risk for everybody.

Tom Temin: Well, they can always use it to pay off college loans for people, I suppose. And also affecting contractors has been the CMMC program of DoD, the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program, and that had a 2.0 version come out some months back. And now they have moved the whole program from one office to the other. Interestingly, under the CIO, instead of under acquisition at the Pentagon, and what are contractors saying about that? I think this is something they generally wanted?

David Berteau: CMMC 2.0 is a new process; it is still unfolding. It may take a year or more before we’ve actually got a change to the clause in the DFARS supplement come into play. And so it’s not active in any contracts. Now, moving it under the CIO to us at PSC has two possible advantages. One advantage is, we believe that the cybersecurity threat is not only to government contractors, it’s also to government internal systems. And as you saw with SolarWinds, and the Microsoft Exchange Server attacks. In fact, a recent GAO effort pointed this out, many of the targets of those attacks and the victims of those attacks were government systems themselves, not a contractor systems. So the CIO could have the purview over both of these, it would be a positive benefit, if in fact, that’s the way the newly confirmed CIO John Sherman tackles this question.

Tom Temin: And the final question too, by the way, the America COMPETES Act didn’t seem like a big contractor deal. But you’ve identified a couple of issues. And there’s no reconciliation with the Senate version yet. So we might or might not see legislation soon. But what’s going on there with respect to IT contractors?

David Berteau: Well, the hallmark of this bill was the $52 billion of supplemental appropriations for the microchip industry. And of course, we know about chip shortages across the board. And if you’ve tried to buy a car, you know that you’re having trouble getting one delivered anytime in this decade, perhaps. But buried in here in the House version, the Senate version passed last summer, the House version has new provisions in it. Buried in it are some requirements for IT contractors, which are not precisely defined in the bill to meet some real tests on supply chain that we think are going to be trouble. It says it requires DHS to issue guidance requiring the contractors identify the origin of a lot of elements of their supply chain, including software products and services they supply and then certify that those components and those services are free of vulnerabilities and then notify DHS in the event they find one. Well, the notification part’s pretty easy. The certification part is the hard part. Because who knows what the provenance of software is, all you got to do is look at the JavaScript Log4j escapade that we’ve been on where agencies are still struggling to fix this. And so are companies because they don’t know, there’s millions of cases where this is out there. Putting this burden on every company large, middle sized and small to be able to do something that the government can’t do itself is unconscionable, impractical and it will not work. So we’re going to work to try to tackle that question as they go to conference.

Tom Temin: David Berteau is President and CEO of the Professional Services Council. Thanks so much.

David Berteau: Thank you, Tom.

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House Democrats passed a nearly 3,000 page bill last week aimed at American Industrial competitiveness. There’s a lot in there for federal agencies, including the Commerce Department. But does it have legs? To learn more, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke to Bloomberg deputy news director Loren Duggan.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Tell us more about this bill, the status and does it have any hope in the Senate?

Loren Duggan: Well, the version that the House passed on Friday may not be what eventually emerges here. But this is the House’s position on legislation that actually has a track record back to last year. The Senate passed a bill in June that was aimed primarily at competing with China. And one of the main ways that it would do it is put a lot of money into domestic programs for semiconductor production. And that’s actually an element of this bill that has bipartisan support in both chambers.

It’s more or less some of the other stuff that’s been tacked on to this bill as it’s moved that has made it in the House, at least a more partisan exercise. In the Senate, it was passed with a bipartisan margin. So what we’re likely to see here is maybe even an old fashioned House-Senate conference where people get in a room and hash out a bill to try and come to some sort of consensus on this legislation that I think members of both parties in both chambers and in the White House really would like to see something done on this bill, which to me suggests it has legs and one of the questions just maybe what all rides along with it as it moves.

Tom Temin: Yes. Because there is a lot of money for industrial policy types of initiatives at the Commerce Department. I think some of the health agencies would get money. I mean, there’s a lot, of the hundreds of billions, a lot of it goes to the government itself. So there’s a lot of, I guess, constituencies that would push for this. But is there anything in it that you’ve heard about that could produce, let’s call it for lack of a better word, the Joe Manchin effect?

Loren Duggan: Well, one of the provisions that Republicans have not liked and stood up and talked about a lot in press conferences, and on the floor, is money for things like the Green Climate Fund at the U.N. and some of these international climate change programs, which don’t always get the warmest reception over in the Senate from Joe Manchin. There are other things that they like, some sanctions against China for its policies against Uyghurs and or the things like that. But the money that’s in here probably will win support from folks like Joe Manchin and others. What’s interesting is the semiconductor funding is actually money that would go out the door, and it’s appropriation over a five year period. Some of the other provisions in here are authorization. So it’s Congress saying, as we write appropriations bills in the years to come, this is the level of funding we’d like to see for programs that National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and then there’s just other requirements that agencies are going to have to live with under this. And when the House dealt with this, they also put things in here like reforming law so that people in the cannabis industry and states where that’s legal can access financial services, which is a provision that a lot of people have tried to move in different bills. There’s also something in here to reform ocean shipping laws, which haven’t been touched in a long time. And that’s to help the supply chain. So you’re right, this has far reaching effects throughout the government. But then obviously, out in industry, if this money starts flowing out the door, and the rules come into place.

Tom Temin: So semiconductor chips to cannabis, I can just see it now. Yeah, dude, I’ll make whatever chip you want, man. Well, we’ll see what happens there. But it’s a long way to go yet in the Senate at this point.

Loren Duggan: There is a long way to go. But I think if they made a concerted effort, this could go quickly, you know, there’s procedural steps that they’ll have to take to actually form this conference committee, if that’s the way they go. Otherwise, it may just be a more informal negotiation, House and Senate members behind closed doors. We’ll have to see. But I do think that there’s a win here for a lot of people and a lot of parties. And so that may give it a chance to move forward. If they can cut out the stuff that people don’t like and focus on what they do, you might have a compromise in the making here.

Tom Temin: And what would happen if the nominee for the Supreme Court drops into the Senate in the midst of all this?

Loren Duggan: Well, that could change a lot, obviously. The timing of that is still TBD. But there will be a longer process, anyhow. Once that nominee is named by the president, there will be a long round of taking him or her in this case, because we know that Joe Biden wants to nominate a Black woman for this job. She’ll be taken around the Senate, meet with a number of the senators, eventually get her hearing in the judiciary committee, then a markup and then head to the floor. So that could take some time. I wouldn’t expect that to happen too quickly, especially with Ben Ray Luján, the senator from New Mexico being out for several weeks because of a stroke that he had, which has sidelined him. The Senate is still functioning, but a lot of those things that may have been 50/50 propositions might get sidelined and they’ll focus on things where the Democrats have a little bit more margin to work with.

Tom Temin: I’m sure Senator Schumer himself is delivering the blood thinner.

Loren Duggan: He’ll do whatever he needs to, I’m sure.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Loren Duggan. He’s deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. And behind all of this, of course, the CR, the continuing resolution expires next week.

Loren Duggan: Yeah, so we have only two weeks ago. Feb. 18, is the date circled on the calendar for that to lapse. There were talks last week that didn’t necessarily yield an outcome that appropriators had hoped for where they could get agreement on things like the top line spending, how much to spend on each of the 12 bills that make up the appropriations process and then which riders to include or omit. And that last part might be one of the key sticking points going forward. Also in the mix are earmarks, those projects that members from the House and Senate request for their states and districts. Those are still being discussed, as I understand it. So we’ll have to see if they can make progress this week toward an agreement. Next week was scheduled to be a committee work week in the house, but that might change, maybe members will come back into town. If there’s something to act on.

Writing an omnibus that covers the entire government may take more time than they have between now in the 18th. So even an agreement may require another short term CR> If they can’t come to an agreement, then we’ll be talking about a longer CR and in the back of some people’s mind is still a year long CR, although the military and DOT and other agencies would probably push very hard against that as would other people who rely on this money, because we’re still living under the deal that was signed by President Trump at the end of 2020, which is not how Democrats want to run the government, obviously, with the funding levels and the policies that they’d like to see. There’s a lot of pressure to get this done. There’s still a long way to go on that.

Tom Temin: Because President Biden did sign an authorization bill for defense at that higher number that both I think the ranking and chairs of the Armed Services committees had agreed to. So is there any possibility they could at least do the DoD budget in time to get past the CR and let the rest of the government sail along?

Loren Duggan: Well, there’s at least consensus on that defense authorization level, as you say, but not a dollar has left under that authorization unless that’s signed into an appropriations law. The thing is that Democrats would be reluctant to lock in a defense increase without also locking in what they want to see on the non-defense side. And Republicans don’t want to see too large an increase on non-defense unless there’s also an increase on defense so much as we saw for years with the defense and non-defense spending caps having to raise about the same amount or in parity to get this bill over the line, they’re going to need to have some sort of consensus that allows both to grow for Democrats. So I think that that’s going to be a sticking point. But you’re right, that NDAA bill as it were, was a sign that Congress is open to more defense funding, but that has yet to be signed into law in the way that flows to the DoD.

Tom Temin: And finally, there’s the Russian situation, which kind of looks like a big pile of pickup sticks and little movement here, a little movement there. You don’t know when the whole thing is going to come crashing down. And that could really throw a lot of monkey wrenches into the normal Washington works, couldn’t it?

Loren Duggan: Oh, absolutely. And Capitol Hill got some briefings last week on the Ukraine situation. And they’re going to continue, I think, to push the administration for answers. And for more information on what the plans are. What we may see Congress do is something in the sanctions realm. There’s discussions going on, particularly in the Senate and the Foreign Relations Committee on a package of sanctions that could be signed into law. They might not be immediate sanctions, but they might be triggered by aggression on Russia’s part of incurring into Ukraine. So Congress very much has this in mind. We’ll see if that also bleeds into the appropriations debate. Do they need more money? Or is there going to be an ask there for some sort of additional support to allow the military to prepare if they need to. And we know that not everyone on Capitol Hill agrees with the Biden administration’s position on this. So I would expect pushback and a lot of voices rising about this as this situation continues to develop.

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Congress returns to town this week. And of course, everyone is in a tizzy over the Supreme Court vacancy. But the outcome there is fairly predictable, actually, more uncertain is what they’ll do about the federal budget and a few of what should be bread and butter issues. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin got more from WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And that’s my take Mitchell, that this is predictable. There’ll be a song and dance, but the Biden nominee for the Supreme Court will be confirmed in the end, fair to say?

Mitchell Miller:  I think that’s fair to say, but it will chew up a lot of additional time for the U.S. Senate. And of course, even though we’re early in the year, believe it or not, as you know, congressional deadlines are always seeming to be around the corner. And this is another one where Congress is just pushing it. A lot of work to take place starting this week coming off of the break with the House and Senate both out last week. And if Congress is going to somehow avoid another continuing resolution, they’re really going to have to get busy this week. Staff work, of course, continued last week, but there’s going to have to be a big push now from the top appropriators on the House and Senate, including Sens. Patrick Leahy (Vt.) and Richard Shelby (Ala.). Shelby has not been quite as bullish as Patrick Leahy has been about reaching some kind of overall deal. The house as usual ahead of the Senate has so far passed nine out of the 12 appropriations bills for funding the government for fiscal 2022. But the Senate has not brought any appropriation bills to the floor, and lawmakers are still trying to figure out that top line spending figure. There is some optimism if once they could get to that figure, a lot of other things could come into place. But there’s really a general agreement here that leaders don’t want a year-long continuing resolution. The military branches have been raising concerns about another CR and how it would hurt their long term planning. And in fact, a top Navy official last week just noted that the Navy could face a half-billion dollar shortfall for its ballistic missile submarine program, among other things, if this is going to continue into a longer CR. So a lot of moving parts as usual here.

Tom Temin: Yes, and then there’s the Russian situation, which has some military on high alert in some parts of our military. Over there, there’s some troops on high alert. And if the Russians are going to do anything, they’re going to do it soon. Because if they wait till spring, their tanks will get stuck in the mud.

Mitchell Miller: Exactly. And then you also have the Olympics getting underway soon in China. And of course, Russia and China have their own relationship there. So it’s really going to be interesting to see what the military is going to have to do in connection with all those developments overseas.

Tom Temin: So therefore, Congress is going to have to do a couple triple axel backflips, that somebody over there can get into shape. Alright, so there’s the budget issue. And again, as you say, there are a lot of cycles of mind taken up with the Supreme Court. And what about nominations otherwise? Because there’s still a slew of them sitting before the Senate.

Mitchell Miller: There are and the Senate has really moved through a lot of the judicial lower level nominations through so they’ve gotten dozens of those through. But they’re stacking up and they do have to get those through. And to get back to your issue in connection with the Supreme Court nominee, as you know that there’s only so much time in the Senate calendar because you have all these breaks throughout the year. And nominations is one that dominates the time now in the Senate floor. And so they have to get those through. And then they have to schedule, of course, the hearings and have meetings with lawmakers in connection with whoever the nominee is once the president names the nominee. And then you have all the other regular machinations going on with just the normal budgetary situation. So all of those nominations are going to be piling up as well. So the Senate’s really going to have to get on the stick here.

Tom Temin: And it’s fair to say, too in regard to that, that the Supreme Court nomination, every committee is going to want to hear from the Supreme Court nominee, because whatever the Supreme Court touches will have something to do with that committee. It’s unlike, say, getting a general approved. And the judiciary committee’s not going to give a darn about that one.

Mitchell Miller: Right. Exactly. So all these lawmakers are going to want a piece of this. We have all these pending issues before the High Court. And even though this is in historic terms, the retirement of Stephen Breyer is relatively long range. I mean, usually, as we’ve noted, in the last few years, things happen rather suddenly, obviously with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she died and things change very, very quickly. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) has indicated he wants to get the nominee, whoever it may be on a fast track. Once that happens, as you may remember, of course, Amy Coney Barrett, the latest justice to join the High Court, she was basically confirmed in just over a month. That was one of the quickest ever so the Senate wants to move this, at least Senate Democrats want to move this through fairly quickly. But there are things that the Republicans of course can do to slow the gears and not move this through so quickly. I think we’ll see some of that and then that will all play in with these other issues with the nominations at different levels as well as the budgetary situation.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with WTOP Capital Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller. And droning on and on in the background of all this is uncertainty over the federal vaccine mandate. And it’s been struck down at the lower court level and funny, it could be the Supreme Court has to hear that one also. And what is likely to happen if anything on the Hill with respect to that issue that won’t die?

Mitchell Miller: Well, it’s interesting, because that issue actually could come into play in connection with the continuing resolution and efforts to get the budget moved forward. There has been some noise from some House Republicans and other conservatives who say that if the funding for federal vaccine mandates isn’t included in the latest spending plan, that they will try to hold it up. Now whether they would actually go toe to toe with Democrats and say, we’re going to have a shutdown over this remains to be seen. But certainly that is always a possibility. We always know that as we get closer in the coming weeks, that shutdown will at least be mentioned as people try to get some political leverage on various issues. But in terms of the agencies themselves, and in terms of the military, it seems like everything is effectively on pause right now, in terms of the mandate, because of that ruling from the judge in Texas, that they are holding off on moving toward any kind of discipline for a lot of people. As this gets resolved. Now, the White House has said that it’s confident it is going to basically have a supportive ruling, ultimately on this issue, that still is unclear. But at any rate, the judge also who made that ruling, it’s interesting, noted that the vast majority of people that were affected by this federal mandate actually have been vaccinated. So the judge actually pointed out that it’s not going to have quite as much of an impact as many people might think. But nonetheless, it’s still a huge issue as to whether or not this goes forward.

Tom Temin: Well, in Washington, people like to argue even over moot issues. So why not this one also?

Mitchell Miller: Exactly.

Tom Temin: And then behind all of that is the pieces or chunks, I think as the president and some of the Democrats have called them, of the Build Back Better plan, which did not pass last year. And will that eat up cycles on the Hill to try to get maybe pieces of it done?

Mitchell Miller: Well, it’s interesting. Yeah. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently said chunks. That’s an interesting term that the president used. But at any rate, that was the one that President Biden used a few weeks ago, and they are trying to figure out are these parts of the Build Back Better plan somehow going to move forward? And really, right now, there is not a specific plan to move forward. Now, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was optimistic last week in an interview with Politico saying that he thinks it can be brought back. But right now, there is no game plan, if you will, for how that would happen. And there’s different opinions about how it could happen. It’s interesting, I was talking with Virginia Sen. Mark Warner (D), who’s been deeply involved with these budget talks over many, many months. And he is one of those who is skeptical of breaking it apart into those chunks too much. Because basically, he points out and House Speaker Pelosi pointed this out as well, that if you do that, then you lose the fact that you can get it through reconciliation on only 50 votes. And Democrats, they have enough trouble getting their own 50 votes, much less getting any Republican votes. So once you split this up and try to say, well, we’re going to extend the Child Tax Credit, which incidentally, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin remains opposed to bringing it into part of the Build Back Better plan. If you try to break all of this up, then you have to start working on getting at least 10 Republicans to avoid a filibuster. So given that, along with the fact that you do have the Supreme Court nominee now getting into the lifeblood of Congress here, it’s just really hard to see where Democrats are going to go with this. They’re going to continue to talk about it and say that they want to move it forward. And it’s going to be a talking point for sure. But I think it’s going to be very difficult for them to get the nitty gritty of this done, at least in the coming weeks and months. Now, one last point related to that is when I did talk to Sen. Warner, he kind of hinted that there might be something in the works, maybe a smaller package that might be coming sometime in the next few weeks or months. We’ll have to keep an eye on that.

Tom Temin: Alright, so no chunks with your nitty gritty.

Mitchell Miller: That’s right. There’s a song in there somewhere, Tom.

Tom Temin: I think so, we’ll have to to start a band. Mitchell Miller is Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Thanks so much.

Mitchell Miller:  You bet.

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The latest continuing resolution will keep the government funded somehow until Feb. 18. But it means any fresh initiatives won’t have a chance to get underway until March at the earliest, nearly halfway through the fiscal year. For what that means to contractors, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to federal sales and marketing consultant, Larry Allen.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: So what does it mean, Larry? They can’t do much for a long time.

Larry Allen: Tom, I think it means a really long period of preparation for government contractors, an extended period of going and talking about what you can do, what your customer agencies may be planning, having all of their projects, to use a term, shovel ready. So that the minute the appropriations money hits the account, they can get to work. But it also means that in terms of overall business, until we get those final spending accounts, things are probably going to be a little slow. If you’re fortunate enough to be able to work on an ongoing procurement or project, then you’re going to be able to continue to do that. If you’ve got some one-off business that doesn’t rely on appropriated funds, say something funded by a capital account that some agencies have, again, those are highly specific, you might be able to do some work on those. But for the vast majority of contractors and agencies who have plans to do new work in FY ’22, we’re on hold. We’re on hold probably, as you say until March, which means that we are going to have quite a Ride of the Valkyries for the last six months of the fiscal year. If, this is by no means certain, we do end up with final appropriations sometime in the late winter or early spring.

Tom Temin: Technically, contractors have more leeway to work on new projects that could come after the CR than the government itself does because the CR proscribes activities, spending anything on new projects. So that includes the man hours people might be doing for planning and setting requirements. They may do it anyway. But it’s almost like working during a shutdown: You’re not allowed to, period.

Larry Allen: Well, that’s part of the issue about working during a CR, Tom. You have to make sure things that you’re doing like monthly maintenance, are you going to get paid for that? A lot of agencies will say sure, you’re going to get paid because we have the dollars. But they’re not going to be able to do anything like a yearly contract or even any contract that would take them beyond the period of time for which they’ve been given funds. And you also do want to make sure as a contractor that you’re going through. Those … software license renewals, the subscription renewals, the maintenance packages that you’re providing to your customers, you’ve got to talk to the contracting officer to make sure that when you’re performing work on these things, you’re going to get paid. Because you can’t always take for granted that merely because the money’s there that you have taken all the necessary contractual steps to ensure that it comes to you. More than one contractor has assumed incorrectly, A) the CR passed, I’m going to continue to get paid, only to find that the contracting officer said, well, the authorization for you to work on this deal expired, and we never renewed it. So thank you for your service.

Tom Temin: So this happens, you’ve seen this happen?

Larry Allen: I have seen it happen. It doesn’t happen very often. But it happens often enough that it’s worth a word of caution to contractors. Don’t assume check with the contracting officer, not the court, not the end user. But the contracting officer just to make sure that the fine print is in place and enables you to continue getting paid.

Tom Temin: Yeah, what I was talking about, though, in terms of what the government can do for something that they would have launched as a new project in 2022, that is launching last Oct. 1, they can’t even work on those projects in the absence of having an award to carry it out. Because that’s spending government money on a new project.

Larry Allen: That’s right, unless they’ve got an alternative funding source for all or part of that project Tom, we are stuck in neutral, the lights aren’t really even on. Think of it as a long period of time and people are starting line while the starters on a four-month vacation. So it gets frustrating for everybody gets frustrating for government agencies. This is really no way to run an agency. It’s not good from an agency management standpoint. It’s frustrating for contractors, because contractors would like to be able to launch in and get some business they want to get money in the pipeline, particularly if they’re small contractors. That’s how they survive. So the longer we have a CR, it’s not that everything’s fine. Everything’s not fine, it’s not as bad as if it would be if we were shut down. But we’re really operating with one, maybe one-and-a-half hands, depending on the agency tied behind our back.

Tom Temin: And remember when that starter does start the race, they shoot blanks. We’re speaking with Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Business Partners. And let me ask you about something else you’ve pointed out this week, and that is the GSA is threatening on order status suspension. There’s something new that contractors have to do coming from GSA on top of every other requirement that’s been heaped on in recent months.

Larry Allen: Right, because it’s not enough that we just stopped talking about a CR, Tom, and the slow business that’s gonna lead to. In the meantime, that hasn’t stopped the Office of Management and Budget and the regulatory wheels from turning out new requirements on vaccine mandates, scrims supply chain security management, Section 889 B, telecommunications requirements, minimum wage, a whole host of other requirements that are going to hit contractors in the pocketbook that they have to comply with. So GSA thought, hey, why not pile on? This is a great time to send out a directive to schedule contractors, saying if you don’t change your GSA Advantage systems to show order status in a couple of months, we’re gonna just turn your Advantage listing off, as well as the e-buy listing. Why not? If you’re going to go in for nickel, in for a dime, in for a dollar, in for 100, right, Tom? I mean, it just seems like really bad timing on GSA’s part to do this. And there are a lot of reasons why. I mean, first of all –

Tom Temin: Well, what is the significance of order tracking requirements under the GSA Advantage? What does that really mean for contractors?

Larry Allen: Well, basically, Tom, what it means is that if you’re a federal buyer, and you placed an order through GSA Advantage, the contractor has to have a system now, that will allow you to track it, alright? The order has been placed, the purchase order’s been sent to the warehouse, the same type of thing you can get in your private lives when you’re doing business with FedEx, UPS, or even the Postal Service. They all have tracking capabilities for certain types of transactions. So GSA wants to have the same capability for advantage. Great idea in terms of customer service. I’m not suggesting that GSA shouldn’t have this capability. What I am suggesting is that to make it a mandate now, it really is kind of issuing a threat that says, do this by this date, or else. And the contractor’s like really, because again, I don’t have enough to do right now? So I’ve got to do this? Who does this hit the hardest, Tom? Well, probably really hits small business schedule contractors the hardest. A great number of GSA contractors already have this capability. Who are the ones that likely haven’t invested and put the cash into it are smaller businesses, smaller businesses that GSA administration says they want to do more with. Well, what exactly is more? Everybody kind of thought it was more business. But here, you can say, well, is “more” taking the small businesses to the woodshed and beating them up for not complying with this schedule mandate? It’s another burden that falls disproportionately on small businesses. And here’s the kicker, Tom, the truth is that nowhere near 5% of GSA Schedule orders go through Advantage. We’re talking about a percentage, small, small amount of orders that actually go through the system. So GSA’s mandate has the potential to disrupt a significant amount of the small business suppliers on their schedules program for almost no gain. Again, it’s great to have an order tracking system. Everybody wants to know where their orders are. I just think the agency could have put this in more perspective and said, in light of everything else that we’ve got going on, yeah, maybe we’ll push this one out a little bit?

Tom Temin: Memo to Robin [Carnahan, GSA administrator]. Larry Allen is president of Allen Federal Business Partners. Thanks so much.

Larry Allen: Tom, thank you and I wish your listeners happy selling.

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Like soccer superstar Megan Rapinoe, Congress is good at kicking things. Megan scores goals, though; Congress kicks procrastination cans down the road. Now the continuing resolution for funding the government runs until February — February 18, to be exact. So you can reset the countdown clock. For what Congress will be dealing with next, The Federal Drive with Tom Temin. spoke to WTOP Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin: Mitchell, let’s start with the federal workforce. That has been the subject of a lot of interest by Northern Virginia Congressman Gerry Connolly.

Mitchell Miller: That’s right, Virginia Congressman Gerry Connolly, again, making a lot of pushes for reforms within the workforce, whether it’s telework or now what he’s really looking at is the new generation of federal workers. As you well know, there has been an aging process with baby boomers and a lot of federal workers leaving the federal workforce. So he has proposed this new legislation — the longer name of it is the Building the Next Generation of Federal Employees Act, or as he likes to call it, the Next Gen Feds Act. And this would do a variety of things. We’ll get to telework in a second. But one thing it would do in terms of trying to recruit younger people into government is address this issue of the aging workforce by creating a new internship program. And it’s much more complicated than just hiring a few more interns. They would actually create a fellowship center within the Office of Personnel Management that would actually centralize all of these internship programs, of which there are myriad throughout the federal government. And then they would get guidance on how this center could actually attract and bring in potential interns, hire more interns, get more people into the federal government. One statistic that Federal News Network has pointed out to is that federal agencies at one point just only about a decade ago had 35,000 interns that just dropped in the last couple of years. Now it’s down to only about 4000. So a huge drop in the number of young people that were actually getting internship experience in the federal government.

Tom Temin: Is there bipartisan support for this bill, do you sense?

Mitchell Miller: I do sense that there is some bipartisan support on this. On another issue that Jerry Connolly has always pushed, as we’ve talked about, is telework. There is less bipartisan support there. There is bipartisan support that people do feel that they do need to get new blood, basically, into the federal government, whether it’s Democrats or Republicans are pretty supportive of that. On the telework issue, Connolly is again pushing agencies, making sure that they do not prohibit telework within their agencies and try to do more to get people working from home. There is some Republican skepticism still, among some lawmakers at any rate, that there may not be as much efficiency and productivity when people are not working actually in the office. And there’s been a push on the other side of the aisle to try to get people more back into the offices. So that’s an interesting dynamic as well. And then one last thing that Connolly is addressing is OPM. He is basically making a push that it be nonpartisan. This is in reaction to several things that happened during the Trump administration.

Tom Temin: Well, I guess Jerry Connolly’s a good person to call for this. He’s got a lot of federal employees in his district, although, God bless him, he’s no youngster. And so it must look odd to some of the young people seeing Look who’s wanting us to come into government.

Mitchell Miller: Right. Well, that’s been an issue, actually, with the Democratic Party as a whole. If you look at the Democratic leadership, Steny Hoyer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a lot of the generational shift is about to happen here, at least in Congress and likely in federal government agencies.

Tom Temin: Alright. And then, of course, as we said at the outset, the government shutdown was averted with a vote late on Thursday. So there’s a couple of more months to go now. But this had to do with the vaccine mandate. It was kind of tied in with the concessions that were made to get that vote through some of the Republicans. So what can we see ahead there?

Mitchell Miller: Well, interestingly enough, while that came up and it was averted, basically the Democrats said they would allow an amendment by Utah Senator Mike Lee to put this on the floor and say, we want to get rid of this federal mandate and take away the funding for it. It fell short, in part, because two Republicans were actually not here in Washington. And so now it’s actually going to be brought up separately this week. The legislation is actually sponsored by Indiana Senator Mike Braun. He believes that he actually has enough votes to get it passed in the Senate. That’s because the often wild card West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has indicated he would possibly support this legislation, which would basically take away the federal mandate for companies that have 100 or more employees. We’ll see how that plays out in the Senate. I don’t think there’s enough support in the House, which would be required to pass it as well. And then also there is the potential threat of the veto pen from President Biden, who no doubt would oppose this.

Tom Temin: Got it. We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. And this discussion kind of points to the larger issue, which is the budget process that is just tied into so many non-budget related items year after year, whatever the topical issue of the year is. And so to use Washington parlance, it seems broken. You spoke at length with Senator Van Hollen. And what did he say about it?

Mitchell Miller: Right, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, as you know, is a member of the Budget Committee. He is well steeped in these budgetary matters. And he really does feel that this is broken. You know, you have to go back to 1996 was the last time that Congress actually got everything passed on time. So this is why we always come up, as you know, against this wall every December or late November, where there’s yet another threat of a shutdown. And for a while, it did look last week like there might be a shutdown, at least for a few days. Van Hollen says it’s really difficult to find any kind of solution to this, because members of both parties have been at fault at times. He says it’s really just a matter of political will. And there is just not the political will right now to get this done. Earlier, I’ve talked to Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, who has long advocated that he thinks the calendar should just be shifted. And we should get away from this point where the fiscal year actually starts in October and actually move it to the traditional calendar and have it start in January. And he believes that would get us away from this constant push toward the holidays, where we’re always up against it, like a kid who’s trying to get their homework done at the end of the semester.

Tom Temin: Well, he probably forgets it at one time — the federal fiscal year started July 1, to avert all of these issues. They moved it to October 1, maybe they’ll come around to July 1 again.

Mitchell Miller: That would be interesting. And it seems like no matter how they shift the calendar, you’re always going to have them pushing up against these deadlines.

Tom Temin: And the Senate has the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. And that’s starting to feel a little anxious, too, because they have gotten that done by the end of the calendar year, year after year.

Mitchell Miller: Right. I mean, as many lawmakers like to proudly point out on the Senate side, the NDAA has been passed essentially on time for 60 years in a row, which is virtually unheard of here in Congress, as you know. And there’s been some trouble with it, though. There’s been a lot of pushback from Republicans with the Senate leadership on getting amendments. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he’s provided plenty of chances for amendments. And he points out that actually there have been fewer amendments in past years when Republicans were in power than during the Democratic tenure. They seem to have made some progress at the end of last week, so that we might get the gears moving again on the NDAA. And then the other issue is the debt ceiling, which of course is looming. Treasury Secretary Yellen has indicated mid December roughly is a time that it really has to get done. They’re still trying to figure out how they’re going to do that. And there has been discussion actually of folding the debt ceiling issue into the NDAA. Some Democrats are supportive of this. Republicans seem to oppose it. So we’ll have to see exactly how that plays out. That’s going to be another huge issue, of course, in the coming weeks.

Tom Temin: That does seem like a lot of conglomeration of issues to put the NDAA and the debt ceiling together. They could throw in the budget and just call every year the bill, just have one big bill for everything.

Mitchell Miller: Exactly, as if things aren’t complicated enough right now. Right.

Tom Temin: Right. And then what about the status of the BBB — the Build Back Better? I mean, that has been tossing around now. It’s starting to get a little wrinkled hanging on the vine there.

Mitchell Miller: Right. You know, it’s funny, because that had so much attention for so many weeks along with the bipartisan infrastructure bill. And then when that was passed, everybody started to move on to, well, is the social spending bill, what’s going to happen with the President’s biggest part of his domestic agenda? That has actually been kind of pushed aside by these other issues we have mentioned, but as I talked to Senator Van Hollen, he still believes that Democrats really need to push hard on that in the coming weeks. Senate Majority Leader Schumer has set a very ambitious calendar scheduled for that. He would actually like to get some real major progress on that, really within the next two weeks. That seems pretty ambitious to a lot of staffers, but he would like to get some type of vote on it before Christmas. Again, this really seems like it’s going to be a difficult one to have happen, especially when you have West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, again, indicating that he is in no rush to get this push through by the holiday. So we’ll have to see what happens with that over the next few weeks.

Tom Temin: And speaking of the holiday, just from a social standpoint in Capitol Hill, do they wander in and out of one another’s office with eggnog, Republicans and Democrats? Or is it pretty much, you know, the divide continues despite the season of peace and joy?

Mitchell Miller: Well, you know, there is a relative peace, if you will, over time. But I talked again with Senator Van Hollen about this, in the fact that we have January 6 coming up only about a month away. There is really a toxic atmosphere among many lawmakers between both parties as a result of what happened on January 6. They’re still difficulty in getting a lot of these relationships, any kind of concomitance between the two parties. Now, obviously on the Senate side, there’s a little more collegiality than in the house. But it really has made a difference here in the Capitol. A lot of those old traditions that you talk about have kind of gone to the wayside. Many of the people in the parties, you know, the Democrats and the Republicans, they kind of just huddle on their own. Not to say that there’s not some bipartisan crossover here and there, but it’s certainly a lot less than it used to be during the holidays here.

Tom Temin: And if you show up to one of those parties, don’t wear your fur hat with horns.

Mitchell Miller: Don’t do that.

Tom Temin: Alright, Mitchell Miller is Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Thanks so much.

Mitchell Miller: You bet.

Within the span of 24 hours, House leadership agreed on a deal for a continuing resolution, and members cleared it through the House and Senate after days of drama and disagreement.

President Joe Biden had a whole day to sign it into law before the government shutdown deadline was due to expire.

The CR extends current funding levels through Feb. 18, a date we hadn’t really heard about until  Thursday morning, when House appropriators announced a breakthrough deal.

I have to say it looked a little dicey there for a day or so. A small group of senators wanted to hold up passage of a temporary stop-gap over their demands that a CR include a prohibition on funding for the Biden administration’s various vaccine mandates. They agreed to separate vaccine mandate issues into a separate amendment, which failed on the Senate floor on Thursday night.

Senators eventually voted 69-28 to advance the continuing resolution. In today’s world, that’s a landslide.

This might sound like good news. Of course, avoiding a government shutdown is a good thing.

But agency program managers, the Biden administration and most federal contractors will tell you the situation isn’t ideal, especially the longer the CR cycle continues. Prudent members of the opposing party will agree continuing resolutions are always bad news, because they make things more difficult for agencies who, inevitably, have ever-changing priorities that need funding — or at least a need to move funds around.

So what does the continuing resolution mean for the prospects of a federal pay raise at the start of 2022?

As far as we know, the Biden administration is still pressing ahead with its plans to provide a 2.7% federal pay raise to civilian employees starting in January 2022.

(As a reminder, 2.7% is an average. Some employees, depending on their locality pay area, might see raises that slip a notch or two above 2.7%, while others might see raises that are slightly lower).

It’s not official, and it’s not a done deal until it is. That won’t happen until Biden signs an executive order implementing the raise, something that usually happens near the end of the calendar year.

But because agencies are still operating within 2021 funding levels, it means they’ll have to incorporate a pay raise within the bounds of their existing budgets. That means budgets will get tighter for agencies, at least until the point lawmakers pass new appropriations bills for 2022.

If they do at all.

This certainly isn’t the first time in recent memory that agencies will start a new calendar year under a continuing resolution.

It happened back in fiscal 2018, when Congress kept most agencies running on 2017 funding levels through March 2018.

Still, employees got an average 1.9% federal pay raise to start off 2018. Former President Donald Trump made the raise official via an executive order, which he signed in the final days of 2017. Congress eventually signed an omnibus spending bill into law on March 23, 2018.

And who can forget the mess that was fiscal 2019? Congress secured full-year funding for some agencies back in 2018 but left a decent chunk of government operating under a continuing resolution until late December. A partial government shutdown started right around Christmas. As if anyone needed a reminder, it lasted 35 days, the longest in U.S. history.

Another continuing resolution reopened government in late January 2019. Congress eventually passed an omnibus spending bill in mid February, which funded agencies with new spending levels for the remaining months of fiscal 2019.

That bill, which Trump signed on Feb. 15, 2019, included a 1.9% retroactive federal pay raise for civilian employees, a reversal from the pay freeze workers had started the calendar year with.

I mention these examples because we often look for precedents in this space, some indication from the past that might tell us what to expect in the here and now.

But while feds will avoid the kind of government shutdown drama we’ve experienced around the holidays for the last several years now, there’s still plenty for Congress to do.

It must still address the debt ceiling, and the House-passed Build Back Better Act has an uncertain fate. The annual defense authorization is up in the air too. Congress has passed a version of the National Defense Authorization Act for the last six decades.

And once lawmakers return to Capitol Hill from the holidays, they have quite a bit of work ahead of them on those 2022 spending bills. The White House has been warning Congress against the prospects of a full-year continuing resolution, which is still a possibility if members can’t agree on how to fund the Biden administration’s priorities beyond February.

So consider the next several months unsettled, even if you might see a bump in next year’s paychecks.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By David Thornton

Over several months spanning 2011 and 2012, the International Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve in Quebec, Canada, was robbed. Thieves stole 3,000 tonnes of maple syrup, valued at the time at C$18.7 million. Adjusted for inflation, this was the most valuable heist in Canadian history.

Source: Wikipedia 

Earlier in the day, congressional leaders announced they had finally reached an agreement to keep the government running for 11 more weeks, generally at current spending levels, while adding $7 billion to aid Afghanistan evacuees.

Once the House voted to approve the measure, senators soon announced an agreement that would allow them to vote on it quickly.

“I am glad that in the end, cooler heads prevailed. The government will stay open and I thank the members of this chamber for walking us back from the brink of an avoidable, needless and costly shutdown,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The Senate approved the measure by a vote of 69-28.

The Democratic-led House passed the measure by a 221-212 vote. The Republican leadership urged members to vote no; the lone GOP vote for the bill came from Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

Lawmakers bemoaned the short-term fix and blamed the opposing party for the lack of progress on this year’s spending bills. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said the measure would, however, allow for negotiations on a package covering the full budget year through September.

“Make no mistake, a vote against this continuing resolution is a vote to shut government down,” DeLauro said during the House debate.

Before the votes, Biden said he had spoken with Senate leaders and he played down fears of a shutdown.

“There is a plan in place unless somebody decides to be totally erratic, and I don’t think that will happen,” Biden said.

Some Republicans opposed to Biden’s vaccine rules wanted Congress to take a hard stand against the mandated shots for workers at larger businesses, even if that meant shutting down federal offices over the weekend by blocking a request that would expedite a final vote on the spending bill.

It was just the latest instance of the brinkmanship around government funding that has triggered several costly shutdowns and partial closures over the past two decades. The longest shutdown in history happened under President Donald Trump — 35 days stretching into January 2019, when Democrats refused to approve money for his U.S-Mexico border wall. Both parties agree the stoppages are irresponsible, yet few deadlines pass without a late scramble to avoid them.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said Democrats knew last month that several Republicans would use all means at their disposal to oppose legislation that funds or allows the enforcement of the employer vaccine mandate. He blamed Schumer for not negotiating and for ignoring their position.

If the choice is between “suspending nonessential functions” or standing idle while Americans lose their ability to work, “I’ll stand with American workers every time,” Lee said.

Lee and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., authored an amendment that prohibited federal dollars being spent to implement and enforce a series of vaccine mandates put in place by the Biden administration. The amendment went down to defeat with 48 yes votes and 50 no votes. But having the vote opened the door to taking up the full spending bill immediately.

Lee said millions were being forced to choose between an unwanted medical procedure and losing their job.

“Their jobs are being threatened by their own government,” Lee said.

“Let’s give employers certainty and employees peace of mind that they will still have a job this new year,” Marshall urged before the vote.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., countered that the federal government should be using every tool to keep Americans safe and that is why the Biden administration has taken steps to urge employers to make sure their workers are fully vaccinated or test negative before they come to the workplace.

“No one wants to go to work and be worried they might come home to their family with a deadly virus,” Murray said.

The White House sees the vaccinations as the quickest way to end a pandemic that has killed more than 780,000 people in the United States and is still evolving, as seen Wednesday with the country’s first detected case of a troubling new variant.

Courts have knocked back against the mandates, including a ruling this week blocking enforcement of a requirement for some health care workers.

For some Republicans, the court cases and lawmakers’ fears about a potentially disruptive shutdown were factors against engaging in a high-stakes shutdown.

“One of the things I’m a little concerned about is: Why would we make ourselves the object of public attention by creating the specter of a government shutdown?” said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a GOP leader.

The administration has pursued vaccine requirements for several groups of workers, but the effort is facing legal setbacks.

A federal judge this week blocked the administration from enforcing a vaccine mandate on thousands of health care workers in 10 states. Earlier, a federal appeals court temporarily halted the OSHA requirement affecting employers with 100 or more workers.

The administration has also put in place policies requiring millions of federal employees and federal contractors, including military troops, to be fully vaccinated. Those efforts are also under challenge.

Polling from The Associated Press shows Americans are divided over Biden’s effort to vaccinate workers, with Democrats overwhelmingly for it while most Republicans are against.

Some Republicans prefer an effort from Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., to vote to reject the administration’s mandates in a congressional review action expected next week, separate from the funding fight.

Separately, some health care providers protested the stopgap spending measure. Hospitals say it does nothing to shield them from Medicare payment cuts scheduled to go into effect amid uncertainty about the new omicron variant.

_____

Associated Press staff writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

Conservative Republicans in the House and Senate who are opposed to Biden’s vaccine rules want Congress to take a hardline stand against the mandated shots, even if it means shutting down federal offices over the weekend. But not all Republicans are on board. One GOP senator after another left a private lunch meeting Wednesday voicing concern they will be blamed for even a short stoppage of the federal government that will not play well with the public.

Friday is a government funding deadline and the Republican objections — particularly in the Senate, where any single senator can hold up proceedings to stall a vote — could delay passage of legislation needed to keep federal operations running.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer opened the chamber saying Democrats are prepared to support the funding bill and urging Republicans not to engage in shutdown politics.

“Our Republican colleagues, meanwhile, can either work with us to move the process quickly through the chamber, or they can engage in obstructive tactics that will make a government shutdown almost a certainty,” said Schumer, D-N.Y.

Political backlash over the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine mandates has been building for months. The White House sees the vaccinations as the quickest way to end the pandemic that has claimed more than 780,000 deaths in the U.S. Wednesday sparked fresh fears, with the country’s first detected case of a troubling new variant. During the last government shutdown battle in September, Republicans also tried to halt the vaccine mandate.

As the political arguments mount over slapping vaccine requirements on some groups of workers, so too have legal challenges. Courts have been knocking back the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates — including a ruling this week blocking enforcement of a requirement for some health care workers.

For some Republicans, the court cases, along with their own worries about a potentially disruptive government shutdown, are shifting them away from engaging in a high-stakes shutdown.

“One of the things I’m a little concerned about is: Why would we make ourselves the object of public attention by creating the specter of a government shutdown?” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a party leader.

On Wednesday, one Republican, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, made the case to his colleagues to link the effort to halt the vaccine mandates to the spending bill during a private lunch meeting at the Capitol.

The idea is to have the Senate vote to strip funding from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to implement the Biden administration’s requirement that private employers with 100 or more workers ensure they are vaccinated or regularly tested, senators said.

Lee appears to have backing from a few senators and hardline Republicans in the House. “This is a chance to correct a wrong,” said Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who launched a similar effort against vaccine mandates during the last government funding battle.

But among most other Republican senators, enthusiasm for a shutdown ran thin.

“I just hate to see a shutdown — shut down the government — because people have been through a lot,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said while exiting the lunch session.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, told reporters that with the new coronavirus variant: “There’s too much chaos in our country right now, too much concern about omicron. The last thing we need is more confusion and fear.”

Minority leader Mitch McConnell has been opposed to the shutdown strategy, according to a Republican granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. He did not say a word during the private lunch, but publicly McConnell has been upbeat that there will be no shutdown of the federal government.

“We’re going to be OK,” McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters in the halls of the Capitol.

The Biden administration has pursued vaccine requirements on several groups of workers at it seeks to get more shots in arms to crush the virus, but the effort is facing one setback after another in legal cases.

This week, a federal judge blocked the administration from enforcing a coronavirus vaccine mandate on thousands of health care workers in 10 states. Earlier, a federal appeals court temporarily halted the OSHA requirement that employers with 100 or more workers ensure they are fully vaccinated.

The administration has previously implemented policies requiring millions of federal employees and federal contractors, including military troops, to be fully vaccinated. Those efforts are also being contested in federal courts.

Polling from The Associated Press shows Americans are divided over Biden’s effort to vaccinate workers, with Democrats overwhelmingly for it while most Republicans are against it.

Some Republicans prefer an effort from Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., to simply vote to reject the administration’s mandates in a congressional review action expected next week, separate from the federal funding fight.

From the White House, Press Secretary Jen Psaki was confident the government funding bill would be approved by Congress and routine federal operations would not shut down this weekend.

“We have every confidence they will move forward and prevent the government from shutting down,” Psaki said.

She was highly critical of Republicans seeking to prevent the mandates from going into effect.

“These supporters of the former president are advocating for shutting the federal government down, so that 20% of the public who are refusing to get vaccinated or tested can be free to infect their coworkers, our children, filling hospitals,” Psaki said. “They want to shut the government down in order to advocate for people to assert that on society.”

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The debt ceiling is looming closer and the government shutdown is only a couple of weeks away. And the mask mandate continues to roil Congress. For a look at the week ahead on the Hill, WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And before we get to the Hill, though, Mitchell, I wanted to ask you about the latest executive order, something we haven’t seen in a few years here. And that is regarding the work place protections for federal contractors, when a contract gets switched from one company to another.

Mitchell Miller: Right. This is generating a lot of discussion as you know. President Biden signing this executive order last week that limits turnover for federal service contract workers, offering them basically the right of first refusal when a contract changes hands. So under that order, a contract is transferred from one contractor to another. Employees from the previous contract, who did their jobs must also have to be offered the opportunity to keep their jobs working for the new contractor. And this has extensive implications, as you know, covering more than 2 million federal contractors throughout the industry. Now the White House says the order will reduce turnover among workers who fulfill their critical roles and do federal operations. But as you’re also aware, it’s getting pushed back because some contractors or agencies, they don’t like the contractor, and they’re trying to move on. Maybe there were problems, maybe they were issues with turnover, or with employees that didn’t show up, or they didn’t get things done on time? So this is generating a lot of discussion here.

Tom Temin: Yes, I can imagine what would happen: Let’s switch to the other contractor, because Larry, the engineer on this one is terrible. And next thing, you know, you switch contractors. And there’s Larry, again, working for the new company. Besides, one association had told me already that besides that issue, is the fact that the companies that trained and promoted and otherwise took care of these employees – why should they have to give them up to another company, when they could use the same workforce to go after other contracts?

Mitchell Miller: Exactly. Because a lot of these costs, as you know, are generated in that training process. And just getting them up to speed on these contractors can take a lot of money and a lot of time. So there’s some controversy related to this. The some of the contractors say yes, we know what the White House was trying to do here. This is another example of a “well intentioned idea” from the federal government. But there’s definitely a lot of concern about it.

Tom Temin: And it has that come up on the Hill, too, do they discuss it up there also?

Mitchell Miller: Well, they’re going to be discussing this because, as you mentioned, many of these lawmakers that represent areas that have contractors, and of course, we have a lot of them here in the Washington area are making their concerns known. So I have a feeling that the lawmakers are going to make some tweaks and try to see if they can alter this a little bit so that it is more favorable to allowing the contractors to do what they need to do efficiently.

Tom Temin: Alright. And today is the deadline for vaccinations to switch gears here for a minute. And the White House is holding the line on that. Again, what’s the reaction on the Hill?

Mitchell Miller: Well, there is basically a feeling here mainly among the lawmakers that everything needs to hold as the administration wants it on these vaccination requirements, at least more so on the Democratic side. There is some pushback among Republicans who don’t like these mandates, but they are saying that, and the White House reiterated last week that today’s deadline is going to stand. Now the American Federation of Government Employees representing 700,000 federal workers, as you know, has tried to get this to be pushed back. But the Biden administration basically held firm last week and said this date would not be changed. Now, going back to contractors, federal contractors, it has been pushed back. They have until Jan. 4, but there again, there have been some issues. They are not giving the contractors the option of giving weekly tests to employees. And also as this gets kicked around in the courts with OSHA and private contractors and private businesses, we’re going to see some issues percolating I think I’m that front. But at least for now, in terms of the overall federal employees, this deadline today is standing.

Tom Temin: Alright, well, I can see what the Thanksgiving dinner tables around the country are going to be like: You want the drumstick? Show me your vaccination card.

Mitchell Miller: Exactly.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller, Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. And turning to purely at this point, congressional issues, we do have this debt limit deadline coming up and also the deadline for the budget as the continuing resolution starts to expire. What do you see a head going on this week?

Mitchell Miller: Well, this is a familiar picture. We’ve seen this movie before, right? Everything starts to pile up in November and then into December as we get closer to those deadlines. So first, on the debt limit. There is actually some encouraging news related to that. There was a lot of gloom and doom the last time this issue came about but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell last week and by all indications there is some comity in there – as opposed to the other comedy – in terms of what they might actually both be able to agree to, and it appears that the Democrats are now trying to set things up so that basically through reconciliation, they on their own, could actually raise the debt limit. And McConnell has given some indications that he wouldn’t throw any wrenches into the wheels on that. So we’ll see where that goes. Because as you know, the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said, the nation could default on its debt as soon as Dec. 15. There could be some wiggle room on that, but at least some encouraging news on that front. And then related to the Dec. 3 latest deadline in connection with a possible government shutdown. No one really on the Hill feels that there’s going to be a shutdown, but the arguments are going back and forth about how long this short term continuing resolution is going to be. Some Democrats are now saying maybe they should just do it for a very short period of time, maybe even only two weeks. That argument is because they’re saying they don’t want to be locked into a longer CR that would basically freeze those limits that were set. under the Trump administration. I was speaking with Virginia Senator Mark Warner about this who’s very steeped in these budgetary and financial issues, he does not really like the idea of going to a short term, he’d like to see something longer term, in fact, very long term if they could ever agree to it. But we’ll see what happens there.

Tom Temin: And finally, the mask mandates continued to roil the Hill itself. And some representatives have gotten big fines for not using their masks. This as D.C. I think follows Montgomery County today. And going back to the indoor mask mandates.

Mitchell Miller: Yeah, this is really interesting, because in some respects, the U.S. Capitol is almost like on an island here because even though it is in effectively in D.C., although on federal property, these mask guidelines have changed in D.C., as you know, as of today, but in Congress, at least for now the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated that these mask mandates will stay in effect for now, when they were taking up the huge massive spending bill that the President has proposed everybody had masks on pretty much in the chamber. Now there have been some exceptions. And one of them notably is Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green who has made a very significant effort to protest these mask mandates. In fact, she’s already racked up more than $60,000 in fines. Right now, if she were to keep on that track, and they don’t change any of the restrictions. She could actually top more than $100,000 by the end of the year. So a really interesting situation there. There’s others that also have racked up some fines although she is definitely high on that one. I will say in connection with being in the Capitol when you walk around. Everybody still is wearing their masks for the most part here and there. You’ll see people that are not but at least for the moment. These masks are staying on and there is a mask mandate here at the U.S. Capitol.

Tom Temin: Maybe they should call that the Island of Dr. Moreau? Mitchell Miller is Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP, thanks so much and have a great Thanksgiving.

Mitchell Miller: You too.

The last time I ran through the congressional to-do list in mid-September, it included familiar items such as avoiding a government shutdown and passing the annual defense policy bill.

Unfortunately, not much has changed since then. Today, the to-do list looks a little something like this:

• Avoid another government shutdown
• Raise (or suspend) the debt ceiling (again)
• Pass the $1.3 trillion infrastructure bill
• Pass a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill
• Pass the annual defense authorization bill
• (Eventually) secure full-year 2022 funding

For the record, it’s almost exactly the same as it was last month. Congress hasn’t made much progress on any of these priorities, instead choosing to punt on government funding and the debt ceiling until December.

National media outlets have been covering the ongoing debates over the reconciliation bill, which has subsequently delayed full passage of that $1.3 trillion infrastructure bill that cleared the Senate this summer. Roads, bridges and whatever policy proposals make it into the “Build Back Better” plan will get much of the spotlight, but feds will inevitably see new programs or changes that could impact their lives on the job.

The Senate-passed infrastructure bill already has a few.

At this second, the House is theoretically supposed to “aim to consider” the infrastructure and reconciliation bills later this week. We’ll see.

In the meantime, federal employees got pretty close to government shutdown territory last month, with Congress passing a temporary, stop-gap funding measure with hours to spare until the deadline.

The continuing resolution bought Congress approximately nine weeks to work on the government funding problem.

So far there hasn’t been much progress, unless you consider what Senate Democrats released last week. Months after House Democrats unveiled draft spending bills and passed nine of them in their own chamber, senators revealed their own priorities for the current fiscal year. Yes, that’s for the year that’s technically already started.

Senate Democrats want to see spending for civilian agencies go up 13%, almost consistent with the recommendations from the Biden administration and their counterparts in the House.

They’re also eying a 5% funding boost for defense programs in 2022, higher than what the administration envisioned.

Notably for federal employees, Senate Democrats also endorsed the president’s planned 2.7% pay raise for civilian workers next year. Neither the House nor Senate appears interested in legislating their own federal pay raise for civilian employees next year, making Biden’s planned 2.7% increase all the more likely.

If it sounds like they’re making progress, there’s a catch.

Congress and the White House have yet to agree on just how much they want to spend in 2022 in the first place, and they haven’t settled on how much should go toward defense and civilian programs.

Those are usually the kinds of decisions Congress and the White House make first, before choosing how much to spend on individual agencies programs.

Instead, Congress has taken a bit of a backward approach to budgeting this year. And House and Senate appropriators need an agreement on topline spending figures before they can begin to conference over the differences in their respective drafts — and then eventually pass final appropriations bills into law.

Can they do it by Dec. 3? Again, we’ll see. And if not, there’s always the possibility of another continuing resolution to buy yet more time.

I’ll throw one more wrench into the mix, and that’s the ongoing drama over the debt ceiling. This is entirely unsettled territory, one that’s perhaps on the shakiest ground.

Congress managed to temporarily lift the debt ceiling a few weeks ago but raised it through Dec. 3.

Yes, that is the same date the government could run out of funding. Tying the two deadlines together could be extraordinarily tricky, especially considering neither Democrats nor Republicans seem to have budged on their respective positions.

Congress will inevitably make some progress on all of these items, both out of political and logistical necessity, in the coming weeks.

But it’ll be a wild November.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Alazar Moges

The name jack-o’-lantern, comes from an Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack. According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks.

Source: History Channel