President Trump has signed a bill that will keep the federal government funded into December. The spending bill, which also provides emergency funding for Hurricanes Harvey and Irma relief efforts and temporarily defers action on the “debt ceiling,” was approved by Congress and signed into law on September 8, 2017.
The bill provides government funding for the first part of fiscal year (FY) 2018 through December 8, 2017, and ostensibly provides breathing room for Congress and the Trump Administration to continue to make progress on a longer term spending deal. Notably, the bill funds both the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) – both targeted earlier by the Administration for major budget cuts – at close to FY 2017 levels, at least for the short term.
And in a related development, the House of Representatives voted earlier this week to block the use of any funds for the Department of Labor (DOL) to move forward with the Trump Administration’s proposed merger between OFCCP and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), following closely on the heels of action by the Senate Appropriations Committee approving report language explicitly rejecting the merger. Together, these actions send a strong signal that the proposed merger, at least in the short term, will not occur.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.