Same Old October Song: New Projects on Hold President Obama has signed a continuing resolution to keep the federal government operating through Oct. 30. The Government Accountability Office says it is the twenty-seventh year in the past 30 that Congress has failed to approve appropriations before the beginning of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1. The continuing resolution funds most government programs at 2009 levels. The Veterans Affairs Department gets additional money to provide health care for veterans and the Census Bureau receives an increase to prepare for the 2010 headcount. The House has completed action on all 12 appropriations bills for 2010. The Senate approved half of them before the Sept. 30 deadline. The Government Accountability Office released a report detailing how continuing resolutions hamper agency operations. All six agencies GAO examined said CRs caused inefficiencies, added to their workloads and sometimes increased costs. According to the report, last year the FBI had to postpone improvements to its counterintelligence and counterterrorism IT systems. VA medical centers could not award contracts for repairs. Under previous CRs the Bureau of Prisons delayed opening two new prisons designed to relieve crowding. Several agencies said delays in awarding contracts sometimes forced them to solicit new bids and to order a do-over of environmental, architectural or engineering analyses, adding to their costs. Agency officials said delays in appropriations at the beginning of the year contributed to the end-of-year crunch in awarding contracts and, in some cases, made it impossible for them to award all the contracts for which money had been appropriated. They said continuing resolutions added to the workload by forcing them to award short-term contract extensions, then repeat the process until they received their full-year appropriation. Hospitals and prisons can order only 30 days’ worth of food and medical supplies. Bureau of Prisons officials said the short-term contracts cost more than buying for a full year. “[T]here is no easy way to avoid or completely mitigate the effects of CRs on agency operations,” GAO said.