The effects from the government shutdown earlier this year are still being felt. Jeffrey Neal, senior vice president of ICF, says the odds of a government shutdown have dropped significantly since the budget deal was passed, but the threat is still there.
“My fear in this is that people are going to say ‘Now there’s no worry about a shutdown. This is all done.’ This is just an agreement on topline numbers, the defense and the non-defense spending numbers. It’s not an appropriations bill. All of those have to be done. The House has passed quite a few already but the Senate hasn’t and they will have to all be passed,” Neal said. “What we’ll probably end up seeing is a couple of appropriations bills or an omnibus appropriations bill where they roll everything into one big one. There’s a lot of chance for politicians to mess it up.”
