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Category: Administration

OMB Director Mulvaney Pushing for Sanctuary City Language in FY2017

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OMB Director Mick Mulvaney is pushing House lawmakers to include language in the FY2017 omnibus appropriations bill to restrict federal funding grants for cities that do not enforce federal immigration policies. The goal is to bring the House Freedom Caucus on board with a government funding bill.

Such a provision, known as a rider, would put the already delicate negotiations under further strain, as Congressional Republicans already struggle to deal with the Administration’s supplemental request to begin building a border wall. A rider prohibiting federal funds from going to sanctuary cities would guarantee zero Democratic support.  

Despite recent changes to the Senate rules regarding confirming Supreme Court Justices, the Senate will need 60 votes to move forward with any appropriations bill and Senate Republicans are only 52 votes. 

When Congress returns on April 25th from its two-week recess for Passover and Easter, it will have 4 legislative days to pass some vehicle (an omnibus or another CR) for FY2017 funding or risk a shutdown.

Stay tuned.

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.

Votes Scheduled on Supreme Court Nominee This Week

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The Senate Judiciary Committee is currently scheduled to officially vote today on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to become the next Supreme Court Justice. The committee is expected to clear the nominee for floor consideration for later this week.

It is unclear at this point how the nomination vote will play out once it reaches the floor. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) has announced his intention to filibuster against the nomination. On the other hand, it is being reported that the Senate Republicans, in response, are considering changing the Senate rules to do away with the filibuster against Supreme Court justices. At the same time, a number of Democrats have indicated that they plan to vote for the nominee.

UW Federal Relations will provide additional updates.

Two More Cabinet Nominees Clear Committee

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On March 30, the Senate Agriculture Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee reported out the nominations of Sonny Perdue and Alexander Acosta for the posts of Secretary of Agriculture and Secretary of Labor, respectively.

The nominations now head to the full Senate for its consideration.