Obama Administration Signs On To Six Month Congressional Budget Deal

In a statement signaling Obama administration agreement with the House and Senate deal for a six month continuing resolution to fund federal government agencies past the upcoming elections, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney also took the opportunity to let legislators know President Obama is not likely to agree to any 2013 budget cuts below the $1.047 trillion spending cap passed in last year’s Budget Control Act. Carney’s statement points out that while the administration welcomes the agreement, heading off massive layoff warnings to employees of federal government contractors, is a “welcome development,” but warns the president “has made clear that it is essential that the legislation to fund the government adheres to the funding levels agreed to by both parties last year, and not include ideological or extraneous policy riders.”

With the beginning of federal fiscal year 2013 less than two months away, the House has passed only six of the needed spending bills, with House Appropriations Committee approval of five more. There has been no action whatsoever on spending legislation in the Senate. Both houses will begin a six week summer recess days from now.

The continuing resolution will not be introduced or passed until Congress comes back into session in September, but the administration’s announcement of agreement with the deal between Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Reid is certainly enough to let corporate lawyers at huge government contractors breathe more easily as they decide not to have their companies pass out WARN Act layoff notices to hundreds of thousands of their co-workers. The economic panic likely to have resulted from such mass notifications could not have helped either party in the upcoming Presidential and Congressional elections.

Our political leaders should all be severely embarrassed that it nearly always takes until the day before legal deadlines expire to get anything at all done in this gridlocked Washington D.C. political world, despite the fact that the agreed action is really helpful to citizens and constituents of both parties, and for the nation as a whole.

WARN Notification Crisis Averted In Budget Deal

As we predicted in this space just a few hours ago, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Reid just announced a deal for a six month long continuing resolution maintaining federal government agency spending at the $1.047 trillion level for the first six months of federal fiscal 2013, which begins October 1, 2012. The announcement averts the spectre of hundreds of thousands - or even millions – of WARN Act notifications of impending layoffs to employees of government contractors whose businesses might have been affected by loss of revenue from federal contracts should an election eve budget battle in Congress have raised the possibility of a government shutdown a month before Presidential and Congressional elections.

While drafting of the actual continuing resolution could take a few more weeks, announcement of the deal should dry the sweat on the brows of dozens of government contractor employment lawyers who were facing a fish or cut bait decision deadline under the WARN Act in two days. Whew!! In their desire to take off for their six week recess, Congressmen and Senators have finally realized that the fallout from failure to act on this important matter would likely have resulted in a pox on both their houses in the forthcoming campaign season. The citizens can only hold out faint hope, though, that this announcement is a harbinger of any significant increase in the level of responsible leadership we can expect from Washington, D.C. politicians.