Now that the 2012 national elections have been resolved, federal lawmakers' attention will shift to dealing with the so-called fiscal cliff--the combination of expiring tax cuts and automatic federal spending cuts that will take effect early next year if Congress doesn't act. However, Jim Nussle, the former Office of Management and Budget director and long-time House member, believes the "lame-duck" Congress that will return to Washington, D.C., will not be in a strong position to resolve the budget issues necessary to avoid sequestration.

"We've never seen a lame-duck Congress that was very effective at anything," Nussle, also a former chairman of the House Budget Committee, said at a recent forum organized by Government Executive Media Group and underwritten by PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers). The primary focus of members of Congress following national elections is on securing committee and subcommittee assignments and orienting new members, added Nussle, who served as OMB director under President Bush from September 2007 to January 2009 and in the House from 1991 to 2007.

Other members of Congress--those who were not re-elected--are not necessarily inclined to compromise following, in many cases, a bruising political campaign, he said. At best, Nussle said, Congress may be able to agree on a three-month postponement of sequestration--the across-the-board federal spending cuts set up by last year's Budget Control Act to resolve a dispute over raising the federal debt limit.

Nussle added, however, that OMB has discretion to apportion the budget cuts called for by sequestration, meaning that funding cuts can be timed to avoid dramatic changes to agency functions early next year.

"The fiscal cliff may not be a cliff at all," he said, noting that in addition to deciding whether or not to take action to avoid sequestration and extend the 2001 and 2003 income tax cuts enacted in the Bush administration, Congress early in 2013 will need to raise the current federal debt ceiling. As of now, he said, it looks as though action on the debt ceiling will need to take place in February or March of next year, although the Treasury Department can take action to postpone the need to raise the debt ceiling until later in 2013.

Nussle predicted that, in the event sequestration takes effect early next year, congressional offices will not suffer greatly even if federal lawmakers do not step in to exempt themselves from the process.

"They have a lot of pad in their budgets," he said.

In other public sector news:

• The Government Accountability Office said in a report that the Office of Personnel Management needs to clarify its regulations regarding federal employees' ability to offset time off for religious observances by earning compensatory time. 

• Federal lawmakers from Maryland pressed the Obama administration to abandon its plans to move the jobs of approximately 450 Financial Management Service employees out of the state, including a letter from Maryland's two Democratic senators asserting that the Treasury Department lacks congressional approval for the move.

• An arbitrator ruled that the state of Illinois met its obligations to "bargain to completion" with Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees over the proposed closure of two maximum security prisons and five halfway houses and juvenile centers.

• A class of women denied entry-level firefighter positions with the Chicago Fire Department filed a discrimination claim against the city, alleging that its physical abilities test is inconsistent with business necessity and illegally deprived them of employment.