Talks between party leaders and the White House over a measure to fund the federal government for the remainder of fiscal 2011 made little headway during last week’s congressional recess, raising the possibility that Congress may be forced to pass another continuing resolution to keep the government running if leaders can’t reach a deal before the existing stopgap expires April 8 …
There’s a significant possibility that the federal government will be funded by a series of continuing resolutions for the remainder of fiscal 2011, according to numerous congressional staff. Most lawmakers, including party leaders, oppose such an outcome. It would be particularly harmful to the Pentagon …
President Obama signed a continuing resolution Wednesday to keep the government running through March 18, giving lawmakers two more weeks to complete a fiscal 2011 spending bill to fund federal operations through Sept. 30. Enactment of the legislation, which was approved by the Senate earlier in the day, averts a government shutdown but still leaves the Pentagon scrambling to pay its most critical bills in the absence of a full-year spending measure …
Senate leaders indicated they would approve shortly the continuing resolution the House passed Tuesday, providing lawmakers two more weeks to hash out a spending bill to keep the federal government running through the end of fiscal 2011. The stopgap bill, introduced by House Republicans last week, would fund the government through March 18 while cutting $4 billion in discretionary spending from current spending levels …
The Defense Department would be forced to furlough up to half of its civilian workforce in the event of a government-wide shutdown, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn III told the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Tuesday. But even if lawmakers avert a shutdown but still fail to pass a full-year fiscal 2011 spending bill for the Pentagon, the military’s readiness will suffer, and its modernization and efficiency initiatives will be put at risk …
A final spending bill to fund the government for the duration of the current fiscal year may not be enacted for several weeks or months given the divide between the House plan to fund federal operations through the remainder of fiscal 2011 and the approach expected to be adopted in the Senate. The dispute likely will hold hostage the full-year defense spending bill that is part of the House package …
With one glaring exception, DOD programs remained insulated from the hundreds of amendments offered on the House floor to deepen the spending cuts included in the House plan to fund the federal government for the duration of the current fiscal year. Late Friday night, the House rejected an amendment to the fiscal 2011 funding bill that would have pared funding for the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security by 3.5 percent, excluding veterans’ programs …
Passing the essential spending bills needed to keep the federal government running may be beyond the capabilities of the 112th Congress, but watching the drama unfold as the House Republican leadership gives way to the newly ascendant tea party freshmen is sure to be entertaining, according to a panel of inside-the-beltway experts at the ADC 2011 Winter Forum kickoff super session. “This is really unprecedented,” George Schlossberg, a partner with Kutak Rock LLP, said of the rise of a third political caucus in Congress — the tea party — and its potential to prevent House leaders from reaching a compromise with the Senate over funding the government through the remainder of fiscal 2011. And as a result, a federal shutdown looms when the current continuing resolution funding federal operations runs out March 4 …