Government Avoids Shutdown. Perhaps already missing professional football, the U.S. Congress this week punted on federal government funding. Funding for the government was set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on February 18, 2022, but Congress agreed to a three-week continuing resolution through March 11, 2022, averting a government shutdown. With the extension, the federal government continues to operate pursuant to a funding deal agreed to at the end of 2020. This means that President Biden and congressional Democrats have yet to put their imprimatur on federal government funding, which obviously impacts the regulatory and enforcement agendas at agencies such as the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).
Senators Seek Return of COVID-19 Paid Leave. The three-week continuing resolution provides Congress with more time to stitch together the various appropriations bills that will set new government funding levels for fiscal year (FY) 2022. As part of this process, a group of fifteen members of the Senate Democratic Caucus is hopeful that COVID-19–related paid leave requirements can be included in such legislation. They wrote to President Biden, as well as Republican and Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, urging them “to reinstate and expand guaranteed emergency paid sick and family caregiving leave in the FY 2022 funding bill or in any separate COVID relief package Congress considers.” Unlike the leave program they helped to enact as part of the...
The Presidency has refuted a claim by the Oyo State Governor and presidential candidate of the Allied People’s Movement in the 2027 general election, Seyi Makinde, in which the latter alleged that...