President Joe Biden signed a Continuing Resolution (CR) into law on Saturday, September 30, narrowly averting a government shutdown and keeping government open through November 17, 2023. Federal Managers Association (FMA) National President Craig Carter wrote every member of the House and Senate to urge them to prevent a shutdown and expressed relief in a statement following the CR’s passage and signature into law.

However, Carter noted the toll it takes on federal managers and the country when legislators consistently come to the brink of a government shutdown. "In recent weeks, federal managers have been preparing for a potential shutdown, wasting precious time and resources,” Carter wrote. “Delaying appropriations and flirting with government shutdowns results in egregious costs and waste, even if a shutdown is averted. It takes significant time and resources for agencies to prepare for a potential shutdown. Private sector businesses would never manage their budgets this way, and neither should Congress.”

Carter also expressed concern with the overreliance on CR’s to keep the federal government functioning. “We support the CR, in lieu of a shutdown, yet I want to reiterate that working under a CR is also incredibly costly to the budget and results in harmful waste to the country. By not appropriating funds, and working under a CR every year, this causes extra costs to agencies having to work under the previous year’s budget, and does not allow agencies proper planning opportunities, including being able to buy equipment and supplies in bulk to save money. This results in lost resources and man hours we can never recover, and billions of wasted taxpayer dollars. We urge Congress to come together and provide full Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations for the good of the country.”

As noted above, the current CR keeping agencies funded is through November 17. While this short period of time for Congress to finalize Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations was already tight, the dysfunction and new uncertainties in the House of Representatives, discussed in greater depth elsewhere in this issue, brought action in the House to a halt and adds to the challenge facing FY24.

In addition to the raw economic impact of potential shutdowns, many more people are voicing the real concerns and negative consequences on employee morale, recruitment and retention to the federal workforce, and other related issues as a direct result of the annual mismanagement of the appropriations process. On October 1, Jason Miller of Federal News Network penned an excellent piece addressing the emotional toll the preparation for a potential shutdown causes. Click here to read his article titled “Government shutdown or not, it’s exhausting.”