Posts Tagged ‘continuing resolution’

The House plans to start taking up fiscal 2014 appropriations bills in June, with the defense spending measure possibly reaching the floor by the middle of the month. House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) is expected to get the process started shortly by allocating the $967 billion available for discretionary spending next year among the 12 spending bills, reported CQ. As long as the House and Senate fail to come to agreement over a FY 2014 budget resolution, though, the Democrat-controlled Senate will be crafting spending bills based on a pre-sequester figure of $1.058 trillion …

About 94 percent of the Navy’s more than 200,000 civilian employees will be forced to take unpaid days off before Sept. 30, according to guidance sent to senior officials. Employees most likely will be placed on furlough for 14 days, after the Pentagon determined last month that the fiscal 2013 spending bill provided sufficient operations funds to avoid requiring workers to take 22 unpaid days off. Furloughs are expected to begin in June. Despite alleviating some of the impact of the automatic spending cuts, “decisions need to be made on what we can keep, what can be rebalanced and which ship and aircraft maintenance can be deferred,” the guidance said, reported the Washington Post.

As in past years, the two chambers’ Appropriations committees will make a good-faith effort to pass individual spending bills for the upcoming fiscal year, but there still is a strong likelihood that political realities will force lawmakers to rely on continuing resolutions to fund the government. The primary wrinkle this year will be determining the topline for discretionary spending in fiscal 2014. That cap is $1.058 trillion under recent budget control laws, but sequestration would reduce that figure to about $966 billion in FY 2014 …

More than 700,000 civilian workers at DOD will be forced to take 14 days of unpaid leave in fiscal 2013, eight fewer days than officials had been expecting, as a result of the spending measure President Obama signed into law on Tuesday. By shifting $10 billion into the Pentagon’s operations and maintenance accounts, the FY 2013 spending bill alleviated a shortfall in the account that pays for civilian salaries, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters on Thursday …

The sequester will force the Pentagon to cope with a $41 billion spending reduction in the current fiscal year, rather than an estimated $46 billion, after the fiscal 2013 spending package signed into law this week trimmed defense funding sufficiently to comply with the FY 2013 cap on discretionary spending. The continuing resolution that funded government operations in the first half of the year exceeded the discretionary cap imposed by 2011′s Budget Control Act and, as a result, would have triggered a second sequester to bring the defense budget in line with the cap …

The Defense Department may finally have acknowledged it will need to deal with the sequester this year, but officials remain in denial that they will need to plan for deep spending cuts that could last past the end of the decade, several experts said at a budget forum sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. “There still is a creeping lack of realism over there. They have their fingers crossed that this will somehow all go away and be better,” said Gordon Adams of the Stimson Center …

The House on Thursday quickly approved a fiscal 2013 continuing resolution to keep the government open through Sept. 30, sending the bill to President Obama for his signature. The stopgap spending measure — which includes individual spending bills for defense, military construction-veterans affairs, homeland security, agriculture and commerce-justice-science — locks in $85 billion in sequester cuts for FY 2013. It provides $984 billion in discretionary spending for fiscal 2013, after accounting for the across-the-board spending reductions …

The Defense Department will delay sending out furlough notices to almost 800,000 civilian employees to allow officials to determine whether the fiscal 2013 continuing resolution Congress cleared Thursday can reduce some of the unpaid days off workers would be forced to take. DOD civilians had been told that they would be furloughed for up to 22 days between April and the end of the fiscal year to offset the impact of $46 billion in defense cuts triggered by sequestration …

The House is expected to approve by Thursday a fiscal 2013 continuing resolution funding the government through Sept. 30 after the Senate cleared the legislation Wednesday. Passage in the House would avert the possibility of a government shutdown after March 27, when the current continuing resolution expires. The Senate was able to move to a final vote on the stopgap spending measure after lawmakers reached agreement to consider nine additional amendments …

A final vote in the Senate on a fiscal 2013 continuing resolution is scheduled to take place Thursday and likely would be followed by a vote by the House, allowing Congress to avert the possibility of a government shutdown before the start of its recess. Once the Senate passes the stopgap spending measure needed to keep the government running for the last six months of the fiscal year, the House is poised to approve it as well …