Happy December.  The government runs out of money at midnight on Friday if Congress does nothing.  House leaders, though, are working to pass a two week extension of the current Continuing Resolution that would maintain the status quo until approximately December 22^nd.  The idea is to buy some time to work out a deal on larger spending priorities. While there very well may be an extension, it won’t be for two weeks. Why?  Congress does not want to be in DC for the holidays.  Look for any CR to either be one week or one month in length.   The bottom line is this: We’re looking at the best chance for a government shutdown at any time in the past five years. Whether or not there’s a shutdown is, at this point, almost irrelevant as some of the impact of a shutdown is already being felt by the mere prospect of there being one.  We will have a CR before Christmas of some duration.  There will be no final FY’18 appropriations until sometime in the first calendar quarter of FY’18.