Congress is once again rushing to avoid a potential lapse in budgetary funding authority, which would lead to a partial shut of the Federal Government this weekend. Readers will recall that in January Congress continued using a “laddered,” or “two-step,” process of having two deadlines for parts of the Federal budget. About 20 percent of the government’s funding authority was set to lapse tomorrow, March 1st, while the other 80 percent was set to lapse a week later on March 8th. With the first deadline approaching, Congress still doesn’t have an agreement finalizing the Fiscal Year 2024 budget. But there is a glimmer of hope.

Congressional leaders have agreed to extend the deadline for the first tranche of budget bills by a week, to March 8th. In addition to the original group of Federal departments (Energy, Veterans, Transportation, HUD, and Agriculture, as well as military construction programs), this will include the budgets for the Justice, Commerce, and Interior Departments, which were in the second group of accounts. The working theory is these are the budgets that are least controversial and most likely to pass through Congress. The other budgets, that are in the original March 8th grouping, would have their budget authority extended by a second continuing resolution until March 22nd.

Should these new continuing resolutions (CRs) be passed, and if it leads to FY24 budgets being finalized, it will be welcome news to researchers. NSF, NIST, and NASA are included in the budget bills that contain the Justice and Commerce Departments. Having those budgets done would finally give budget certainty to those research agencies for FY24. In addition, the Department of Energy has been included in this group since November; that would mean the majority of research agencies’ budgets could be completed in a week.

There are a lot of “ifs” in the calculus, however. The rest of the budget would still need to be completed, and that includes the Department of Defense and its research accounts. As well, this new batch of CRs are that: continuing resolutions, not passed into law budgets. And all the politics and dysfunction in Congress are hanging over the process. So, a glimmer of hope that this budgetary year could be finished before the end of the month, but it is only a glimmer at the moment. Please keep checking back for more updates and the latest news.