While most national media outlets focused on the border wall issue during last week’s Congressional action, the real good news for contractors is that the legislation provides full funding for DHS, State, Justice and other agencies for the remainder of the fiscal year.  That’s very good news for both contractors and agencies, both of whom had recently been nervously eying the prospect of a shutdown or a “permanent” FY’19 CR.  New project starts may now be possible by the end of March.  That’s about a month earlier than last year and a two month improvement over FY’17.  Budget analysts predict that larger or mission critical projects will still be able to move forward as planned.  It’s smaller or less needy projects that may be pushed to the side.  The compressed time frame, though, does mean that projects that go through assisted acquisition service shops will have to be initiated quickly.  Indeed, all business for the impacted agencies will have to be done in about half a year, though agencies should now be accustomed to that pace given previous year constraints.  Of course, DOD and other agencies that accounted for 70% of discretionary spending have had their funding all along.  Overall, this means that FY’19 should be better for business than the previous two.