After a busy start to the 118th session, Congress is on recess this week. Members are contemplating a number of important issues, though. Besides the debt limit, they have got some crucial re-authorizations ahead. the Federal Drive with Tom Temin gets the details from Bloomberg Government Deputy News Director Loren Duggan.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin
Quick recess for, I guess, the President’s Day holiday week. And what’s top of mind when they do get back? Well, we can start with the debt limit, and no real progress so far, is there?

Loren Duggan
No real progress. There was the discussion a couple of weeks ago between President Joe Biden and speaker Kevin McCarthy, who are going to be key to getting out of this. We did have an important [Congressional Budget Office (CBO)] report come out last week, where they said that the government’s ability to operate using extraordinary measures, now that we’ve hit the debt ceiling, will expire sometime between July and September. So if you’re looking for a period of time to bracket off on the calendar, that’s going to be some, potentially very tense and busy months, as they approach that X date as it’s known. And the uncertainty there, also makes it a little uncertain how quickly they’re going to have to move. But we will see some more talk about this. We’ve obviously seen a lot of political discussion, as we saw in the State of the Union. And that will continue. But, sometimes, you see noise in front of you and talks will start going on behind closed doors, especially within the different party groups, as they line up and figure out what they want their position to be.

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Tom Temin
Right. And the pattern of Congress, in recent decades, certainly in recent years is, if there’s a deadline, let’s go up to it.

Loren Duggan
Absolutely, one of our most popular charts that Bloomberg Government is just a list of the deadlines, because those deadlines drive action, whether it’s a program lapsing or something like the debt limit, those tend to create must pass bills, by the way are also attractive vehicles for other things to move along with them. So this is going to be one of the key deadlines, obviously, and will potentially overshadow a lot of the other discussion as they try to figure out what to do here.

Tom Temin
And there’s a couple of bills for the federal workforce. I think Tim Kaine (D-Va.) from Virginia has that bill to, forever bury the idea of that Section F designation, for certain federal senior executives.

Loren Duggan
Yeah. And bills like that may get some discussion, they may even get some action in the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. And Defense Authorization may be an interesting time to raise that as an amendment. So we’ll see how proposals like that go, the House did pass a bill like that under democratic control in the last Congress. But I’m not sure if Republicans will pick that up, because they may like the idea of that flexibility, if they take control of the White House and have more control two years from now. So that’s an idea that a lot of the D.C. area representatives and senators, in particular, would like to see passed, because it affects their workers directly. But the Schedule F thing is certainly a controversial thing in the minds of some folks.

Tom Temin
And what are the chances of that, I guess, the [Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR)] Act, with the 8.7% pay raise? It’s interesting, because there’s bipartisan support for that idea year after year. Yet, somehow, it never actually does become law, some smaller amount of pay raise ends up being what feds get.

Loren Duggan
Well, I mean, we’re in an environment now, where Republicans, in particular on the House side, are calling for curbing federal spending, and a salary increase like that might be a hard sell, especially if it’s been hard even under the complete democratic control we had in the last Congress. But that could be another thing that’s brought up in different contexts. Obviously, compromise is going to be the key thing to get anything and spending bill across the line or something that would, perhaps, fund a raise like that. But it may be a hard sell, just given the current environment we’re in.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Loren Duggan, deputy news director of Bloomberg Government. And there are some authorizations that are kind of important, that need to take place before June, July, or day X. Correct?

Loren Duggan
Well, they’re more in the Sept. 30 range. The two big ones we’re watching this year.

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Tom Temin
X plus one.

Loren Duggan
X plus one, exactly. So there are many things that are up for renewal this year. But the two that are top of mind for folks. One, is the Farm Bill, which governs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and farm subsidies and will be a big flashpoint, because there could be work requirements imposed on SNAP, and other efforts to curtail some of the subsidies for farm systems. But that’s going to be one of the marquee ones. The other one is for the Federal Aviation Administration, which obviously has been in the news a lot, with the failure of [Notice to Air Missions NOTAM)], the system that sends messages to pilots, which led to that ground stoppage earlier this year. And then just general interest in, what experiences passengers and airlines and the aviation system has, in general. So those two bills are two of the marquee ones. But there are a number of other programs that different committees will be taking a look at, and deciding how to reauthorize and how to change as their dates come up for renewal. But, both, the farm bill and the FAA bill have mandatory aspects to them, in a must pass nature that we might even have to look at extensions, if they can’t come to agreement by the expiration of those on Sept. 30.

Tom Temin
Right, The FAA has a couple of major modernization programs going on, both of them seemed like endlessly long, to get to the GPS navigation system. And then nobody ever heard of NOTAMS, unless you were a pilot. And now everybody knows what it is. Interestingly, they had a modernization plan for that. No dates, no deadlines, that I could find looking at the website to it, in fact, even the website had no dated pages. So I think the FAA is going to get a lot of scrutiny, is my sense coming up.

Loren Duggan
Absolutely. And we even saw the hearing last week in the Senate, where the Acting Administrator was up there trying to answer questions about a lot of different things, not just NOTAMS, but also near misses at airports that Ted Cruz, for example, brought up and he’s going to be a key player in the FAA legislation. So a lot will go into this bill, there’s a lot of questions, members of Congress on both sides of the island, in both chambers will have. So there will be a lot of scrutiny of that agency, which, as you know, is currently without a full time administrator and has an acting one at the moment.

Tom Temin
Right. That’s one too. And speaking of acting, and full time, Danny Warfel did finally have his hearing, before the Senate Finance Committee last week, for commissioner of the IRS. That one appears to be in good shape.

Loren Duggan
It does, even after the hearing some Republicans were saying that they are comfortable with him, and would be willing to back him in a 51-49 environment that we’re in. If the Democrats, alone held together, they could get them over the line. But it seems like this one might be one with some more bipartisanship behind it, with some ours in the yes column on that nomination. Because I think, they approached him as more of a technocrat, that wants to go in there and run the agency. And so that gave comfort to some of them, even as they are going to argue vehemently, over the next couple of years, over the $80 billion infusion of money to that agency that was part of last year’s reconciliation package.

Tom Temin
And that’s more of an IOU, than an actual appropriation. Because anything that’s over 10 years, means it could go away in a given session.

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Loren Duggan
They could claw it back, it was multiyear funding when it was put in to law, and one of the first bills, that House Republicans had, was to claw that money back or anything that hadn’t been spent so far. So there could be efforts to curtail that in the future. But if nothing changes, that money is flowing toward the agency and towards hiring staff and changing systems.

Tom Temin
And I overlooked the fact, that you pointed out, that the labor secretary has announced his impending departure. The first secretary level departure of the Biden administration?

Loren Duggan
That’s right. He’s taken a job at the National Hockey League’s Players Association. He’s a longtime union person, and he’s, obviously, became the U.S. Secretary of Labor, and now he’s going into this job. And so he’ll be leaving sometime in March, I believe. And that will open a key vacancy. I think the deputy secretary, will probably be in the mix, as well some other people, former members of Congress, even potentially, who left. So that’s going to be a key position to fill. Again, with the Senate in Democratic hands, it will be easier than if Republicans had control. But, the Labor Department’s involved in a lot of different policies that Republicans don’t like, whether it’s ESG rules or just general workplace issues. So that’s going to be a key position to fill. But, as you note, as the first cabinet official to go, he has had some White House officials come and go, and lower level folks as well. But that’s the first cabinet secretary.

Tom Temin
Well, if Marty Walsh goes back to Boston, which we presume he will, where he was mayor before being labor secretary, he can go to the Boards and Blades club at the New Boston Garden, and not get in political trouble.

 

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