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News and updates

OMB Releases Memo Outlining Agency Cuts, Lifts Hiring Freeze

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Today, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a memo (M-17-22) to agency heads directing federal agencies to make deep personnel cuts over the next year. This memo replaces the Presidential Memo freezing hiring (M-17-17), which was signed by the President on January 25th, which instituted a hiring freeze across all federal agencies.

The OMB memo tells agencies to “begin taking immediate actions to achieve near-term workforce reductions.” The OMB memo instructs agencies to develop an initial high-level plan by June 30 to “maximize employee performance”, meaning take steps to reward employees deemed effective while working to improve or dismiss weak performers. The memo also calls on agencies to develop a plan to shrink personnel in an effort to accommodate long term budget reductions outlined in the skinny budget. The plan is due by September as part of the FY2019 internal budget submission. Specific cuts will be left up to agencies. It should be noted that many positions across the federal government, including many high-level agency positions, are open and unfilled. Many cuts could be realized by simply not filling those jobs.

Additionally, the memo says that agencies should strive to eliminate or merge programs that are duplicative as well as eliminate non-essential to the agency’s mission or are already carried out in some form by state and local government.

Finally, the memo does attempt to reduce federal reporting requirements requiring the OMB with other agencies will identify initial reporting activities that can be immediately stopped or modified to reduce reporting and compliance burden within 60 days.

Two Weeks of Recess

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As Congress begins a two-week recess for Easter and Passover, the countdown clock begins toward a potential government shutdown.

Lawmakers left town last Friday insisting there would be no government shutdown when the current stopgap measure funding the government expires on April 28. For several weeks, House and Senate appropriators have been slowly negotiating a catchall  or omnibus spending package to complete FY2017, and have been making headway. That said, obstacles remain.  

One primary obstacle is when Congress reconvenes in the final week of April, there will be only four legislative days left when both chambers are in session to get a catchall bill introduced and enacted. While its is certainly something that Congress can achieve, the timeframe leaves little room for error. 

A second major obstacle is that negotiators have yet to definitively resolve how – or whether – to accommodate President Donald Trump’s 11th-hour request for an extra $33 billion in military and border security money. While the proposal is a nonstarter with most Democrats, how to handle the border wall request in the supplemental is causing internal Republican concerns. In March, Trump has requested an extra $3 billion for enhanced border security, including about $1 billion that would be used as a down payment toward a wall. The Administration also wants to give the military a $30 billion boost for the current FY 2017, which would be offset by cuts to domestic spending. However, to do so so would require renegotiating the overall defense spending level permitted under a two-year bipartisan budget deal, which pushed off the sequester caps for two years. To change those caps would certainly require a bipartisan deal. How or how much Congress addresses the supplemental request remains to be seen.

If negotiations stall, a fallback option would be to pass another CR that would simply extend current funding levels for several more weeks or months. That option, however, riles defense hawks because it would leave the military unable to start new programs and gives pause to Democrats, who are concerned about the tremendous latitude given to spending and programs given to the Administration during a CR.

 

Stay tuned.

What We’re Reading, April 3-7

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Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is reading this week.

Rollback of ED Regs? – GOP lawmakers have been clear since November’s election about plans to dismantle several Obama administration higher education regulations, including two major rules aimed at the for-profit college sector. Read about it in Inside Higher Ed. 

Nukes Detonated – On Thursday, Senate Democrats voted to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination, and Republicans couldn’t come up with the necessary 60 votes to overcome that filibuster. If Senate rules were adhered to, Gorsuch’s nomination would have been blocked. Senate Republicans responded simply by changing the rules so that 60 votes were no longer needed to advance a Supreme Court nomination. Read more in Vox.

Breach –  Personal information for up to 100,000 taxpayers may have been compromised in a security breach of a critical online tool used to fill out student loan applications, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen said Thursday. The IRS is beginning to notify people potentially affected by the breach. Read more in The Wall Street Journal. 

Most Popular Domestic Program – Speaker Ryan on NIH budget “All I would say is perhaps the most popular domestic funding we have among Republicans is NIH.” Read more in Roll Call. 

Current CR Expires April 28 – Congressional Republicans are working aggressively to craft an agreement intended to keep the government open past April 28, but their bid to avert a shutdown hinges on courting Democrats wary of President Trump and skirting the wrath of hard-line conservatives and Trump himself. Read more from the Washington Post.

Financial Aid Tool Breach – Personal information for up to 100,000 taxpayers may have been compromised in a security breach of a critical online tool used to fill out student loan applications, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen said Thursday. Read more in the Wall Street Journal.

6 Reasons You May Not – Graduating from a four-year college in four years may sound like a fairly straightforward venture, but only 41 percent of students manage to do it. That matters. The longer it takes, the less likely a student is to make it to graduation: A quarter of students drop out after four years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, and most say it’s because of money. Cost, indeed, is a major issue for many families — in-state tuition and fees run $8,940 on average at public institutions, $28,308 at private ones. Many of those who finish in five or six years have either unnecessarily drained their parents’ bank accounts or end up in a lot more debt. Read more in The New York Times. 

Peanut Butter – The NBA is secretly addicted to eating peanut butter sandwiches pregame. Read more in ESPN.

Gorsuch Confirmed

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After a very bitter fight between the two parties, the Senate confirmed earlier today Neil Gorsuch as the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court. The final vote was 55 – 45, with three Democrats joining the Republicans to support the nomination. Justice Gorsuch is expected to be officially sworn next Monday morning.

Gorsuch Nomination Moves Forward After Senate Rule Change

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The Senate earlier today used the “nuclear” option on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court by eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations.  The Senate voted along party lines to change the Senate rules to allow Supreme Court nominations to move forward by a simple majority vote rather than meeting the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

After the rule change, the Senate agreed to proceed on the nomination, setting up a final vote on Gorsuch most likely late Friday.