Congress Returns Next Week to Face a Must-Pass Funding Bill

The congressional appropriations process for fiscal year 2015 started with a fair share of optimism that Congress could return to a more traditional process as opposed to having to rely on continuing resolutions in the absence of passing annual appropriations bills.  The optimism was as a result of the bipartisan budget deal reached last December by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Budget Chairperson Patty Murray (D-Wash.).  That deal set discretionary spending caps for 2015 at $1.014 trillion.  Even with the spending caps in place, Congress failed to send any of their annual appropriations bills for 2015 to the president’s desk for his signature.  Now, as Congress returns from their five-week August recess next week, they must once again rely on passing a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government operating beyond the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.  Congress needs to act quickly if they are to avoid a government shutdown, which is what happened last year after an impasse on the CR led to a 16-day shutdown. As with most temporary agency-wide funding extensions, AGC is concerned about the potential adverse impacts on contractors working on federal projects when agencies face funding uncertainty. For more information, please contact Sean O’Neill at (202) 547-8892 or oneills@agc.org.