FCC Plans to 'Suspend Most Operations' Wednesday in Likely Government Shutdown
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr emphasized Tuesday that he was “ready to go” with what the commission said would be a suspension of “most operations” after midnight Wednesday if Congress couldn't reach a deal on a continuing resolution to extend federal appropriations past Tuesday night, as most observers expected. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department said more than 77% of NTIA’s 600 staff will remain at work following an appropriations lapse, in part because of spectrum funding included in Republicans’ reconciliation package, previously known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (see 2507030056).
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The Senate was set to vote after 5:30 p.m. Tuesday on a pair of dueling CR proposals that the chamber failed to advance Sept. 19 (see 2509190061). Republicans’ House-passed proposal (HR-5371) would keep the government open until Nov. 21. Democrats’ counteroffer (S-2882), which extends funding through Oct. 31, also proposes restoring CPB's $535 million in rescinded FY 2026 funding (see 2509180033). The Senate previously voted 44-48 on HR-5371 and 47-45 on S-2882, in both cases below the 60-vote cloture threshold. CPB already planned to shutter once its FY 2025 funding lapsed Tuesday night (see 2508010061).
Lawmakers privately expected cloture votes on HR-5371 and S-2882 to fail again Tuesday night, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters, “We’ll see how it goes.” The chamber is likely to vote again Wednesday on both proposals if the Tuesday cloture votes fail, and “we’ll probably set up some votes later in the week, but we’ll observe the Jewish holiday” of Yom Kippur on Thursday, Thune said. The GOP-controlled House isn’t currently scheduled to reconvene until Oct. 7.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York confirmed that Republicans were right that he and fellow Democrats backed 13 “clean” CRs, which didn’t include other legislative provisions, when his party controlled the upper chamber from 2021-24. But “in each case, Democrats negotiated with Republicans and said, 'Let’s have a bipartisan bill,’” Schumer said on the Senate floor. He faced Democratic backlash over reports that he’s proposing a CR for up to 10 days if funding lapses Tuesday night.
The FCC said in a public notice released late Tuesday that it “will suspend most operations” just after midnight, but “some public facing filing systems and databases will remain available,” including the Daily Digest. In some previous shutdown plans, the agency had expected to remain open for weeks after an appropriations lapse (see 2309280084). Tuesday's notice said other systems that will “remain available” include the Network Outage Reporting System, the Disaster Information Reporting System, the Electronic Document Management System and the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program portal. ECFS and the Integrated Spectrum Auction System “will remain available to the public, but no user support will be provided except as may be necessary” to conduct certain airwaves sales. The national broadband map will also “be available to the public but with no user support.”
The notice said the FCC would suspend its informal 180-day shot clock for reviewing transactions, with the pause beginning “on the day of review that coincides with the last business day” before the appropriations lapse. It will also extend all filing deadlines for proceedings where the due date happens during a shutdown until “the next business day after normal operations resume.” The FCC is “not automatically extending the deadlines for any comment or filing periods that occur outside of this time period, but we will consider whether it is appropriate to do so once normal operations resume.”
The FCC hadn’t released updated guidance as of Tuesday afternoon on how many employees will go on furlough, but the agency is “proceeding apace with our plans in the event that there is a government shutdown,” Carr said during a news conference after the commission’s meeting. “We have our furlough notices that are ready to go. We have public-facing documents and guidance that will come out down the road here, but [hopefully] it's not needed.” The FCC’s March shutdown plan, released just before Congress agreed on a CR that extended federal funding through Tuesday (see 2503140069), called for furloughing 88% of the agency’s 1,476 employees at the time.
The March plan would have retained 171 staff, including 46 Office of Inspector General employees. The guidance called for keeping 40 staff “for critical oversight/protection of life or property” and 36 employees whose salaries don’t draw from annual appropriations. It would have exempted some employees who certify USF disbursements, conduct disaster response operations, work on interference detection or are preparing for the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference.
The vast majority -- 429 -- of the 463 Commerce employees not subject to furlough in a government shutdown get their salaries from funding in the reconciliation package and other non-appropriations sources, the department said. Some of the exempted employees in part “conduct spectrum studies activities” to identify bands for reallocation as part of the reconciliation package's 800 MHz airwaves pipeline, it said, while others are involved in FirstNet or implementing the $42.5 billion BEAD program and other grant initiatives.