Before this weekend, Congress has three major to-do items on its agenda: the $1 trillion spending bill, the defense authorization bill and the payroll tax cut extension.
With the failure of the supercommittee — tasked with cutting $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit — to strike a deal, Congress is back to square one, said David Hawkings, editor of the CQ Roll Call Daily Briefing in an interview on In Depth with Francis Rose.
If enacted, H.R. 2465 would make several changes to the Federal Employees\' Compensation Act, including allowing assistants and nurses to certify disabilities.
Bernie Becker, a staff writer for The Hill newspaper, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Amy Morris to discuss the myriad budget uncertainties facing Congress and federal agencies.
Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) expressed frustration with the \"dysfunctional\" state of Congress today, blaming lawmakers who he said shouldn\'t be legislating in the first place.
The administration, lawmakers and others are sounding off on the failure of the supercommittee to reach a deal for cutting more than $1 trillion from the deficit. Facing automatic, across-the-board cuts — half from defense and half from civilian agencies, beginning in 2013 — the consensus now seems to be Congress should work to come up with an alternative deficit-reduction plan.
Admit it, have you been losing sleep over the activities of the congressional supercommittee? If not, you may be on the right track, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says.
Despite the successful passage last week of a small group of annual spending bills covering several federal agencies\' 2012 budgets, Congress will likely fold the remaining bills into a single omnibus.
Stan Collender, a budget expert and partner at Qorvis Communications, said nobody should panic just yet about possible automatic, across-the- board cuts. They won't be enacted immediately, he told the Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Amy Morris. And Congress could still wiggle out of them.
A government shutdown was averted Thursday when Congress approved a compromise spending bill. The bill funds the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, HUD, Justice, and some smaller agencies through the end of the fiscal year. The rest of the government will operate on another short-term continuing resolution, which will expire Dec. 16.
The House and the Senate voted to approve appropriations bills for Agriculture; Commmerce, Justice and Science agencies; and the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Taken together this is the \"minibus.\"
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae came under fire from the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday for awarding millions of dollars to executives. The hearing came just a day after the House Financial Services Committee passed a bill to convert execs' pay to the federal pay system.
Congress crafted a partial measure to fund some agencies through fiscal year 2012 and extend a continuing resolution for others. Erik Wasson of The Hill acknowledges that the current budget process has been the most complicated he\'s seen.
With a week until the deficit panel\'s deadline, Bill Frenzel, a guest scholar of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said details about what will be cut and by how much remain up in the air. \"At the point, we don\'t know where any of these axes are going to fall,\" he said.
The Associated Press reports that the House is expected to overwhelming support a bill that would help unemployed vets and government contractors. The Senate has already passed the bill.