Congress Weekly: Congress Took the Bye

Both chambers are gone until November 9 — five weeks of pro forma. The continuing resolution still runs to December 11, Sections 102 and 104 still bar new starts, and the first vote back is a permitting bill wearing a tax bill’s number.

Sources: Washington Post · Commanders · Senate roll call votes · House Clerk

Congressional Calendar — Both Benches Are Empty

For the first time this fall the two chambers are on the same clock, and the clock is stopped. The House has held pro forma sessions only since September 16, when it passed the Retire through Ownership Act, S. 2403, 401–14 on Roll Call 314. Its next votes are expected Monday, November 9.

The Senate worked longer and stopped more abruptly. It passed S. 4668 on student-athlete protections 77–22 on September 28, rejected a motion to proceed to a health-care resolution and a discharge motion on September 29, and on September 30 failed cloture twice — 53–47 on H.R. 7008 and 57–43 on H.R. 9340 — before confirming Keith Sonderling as Secretary of Labor 47–41. That confirmation, vote 256, is the last roll call of the session.

Then the Senate published the quietest document of the week: a schedule of eleven pro forma sessions running October 5, 6 and 9; October 13, 15, 19, 22, 26 and 29; and November 2 and 5 — then adjournment until 3:00 p.m. on Monday, November 9. A pro forma session is a chamber opened and closed, usually inside a minute, by one member. It exists to satisfy the constitutional bar on either chamber adjourning more than three days without the other’s consent, and to block recess appointments. It is not a session in any sense you can sell into.

The number for your capture board has not changed since last week, and it is still zero. What changed is that it is now zero in both chambers, and the next date on it is November 9.

The Standings — What Belongs on the Board

The middle column is what the record shows. The last column is the next thing you can actually observe.

The Next Snap Is a Permitting Bill in a Tax Bill’s Jersey

Here is the single most useful thing in the Senate’s adjournment notice, and it is easy to misread. The vote scheduled for approximately 5:30 p.m. on November 9 is cloture on the motion to proceed to Calendar #453, H.R. 2347. Look up that bill number and you will find the Survivor Justice Tax Prevention Act, a measure by Rep. Lloyd Smucker that amends the Internal Revenue Code to exclude from gross income non-punitive damages received on account of sexual acts or sexual contact. The House passed it by voice vote on April 27 — bipartisan, uncontested, and nothing to do with energy.

It is a shell. The text the Senate intends to put inside it is the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, the permitting package released on September 30 by the chairs and ranking members of the Environment and Public Works and Energy and Natural Resources committees — Shelley Moore Capito, Sheldon Whitehouse, Mike Lee and Martin Heinrich. It rewrites pieces of NEPA, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act, and it changes how transmission lines get sited and how long anyone has to sue.

Why that bill? Because the useful properties of a shell are that it has already passed the House and that nobody fought about it. A measure that cleared on a voice vote carries no bloc of members invested in its text, and a House-passed revenue bill sidesteps an argument about origination. Swapping the contents of a shell is ordinary practice, not a trick — but it means the title on the floor calendar is routinely the least informative thing on it.

For a defense small business, the practical read is short. The first thing the Senate does when it comes back is not defense. It is not the NDAA, and it is not appropriations. If you sell into environmental review, transmission, site work or construction, November 9 belongs on your board. If you are waiting on a new defense start, it is the other series, and it tells you only how the floor time gets spent in a month that also has to produce a funding bill.

What Did Not Move

Five weeks is long enough that it is worth restating what is still true, because none of it changes while the chambers are empty.

The government is funded by P.L. 119-103 at FY26 rates through December 11. Section 102(a) still bars the Department from using that money to begin production of items not funded in FY26, to raise production rates above FY26 levels, or to start a project, P-1 line or R-1 line that lacked FY26 authority. Section 104 applies the same no-new-starts rule across the government. Work that already had money keeps going. Work that did not, does not start.

The FY27 defense authorization is where it has been since July: H.R. 8800 passed the House 216–212 on July 22, Senate cloture on S. 4784 failed 50–46 on July 14, and there is no conference and no named conferees. Nothing happened to it this week because nothing could.

Count the calendar that is left. The Senate returns November 9. The continuing resolution expires December 11. That is about five sitting weeks for both chambers to pass full-year appropriations or another stopgap, and for anyone who wants an NDAA to conference one. It is not impossible — the last two election-year authorizations were both signed on December 23 — but it is a crowded month, and it starts with a permitting bill.

Weekly Digest — The Only Deadline This Week Is DIU’s

Congress has given you nothing to react to until November 9. The Defense Innovation Unit has given you nine days.

Both CLASS ACT calls close October 13: PROJ00718 for companies building sensors and effectors to defeat unmanned systems in and around maritime environments, and PROJ00719 for the investors backing them. Awards are prototype other transactions with a possible production follow-on.

One open question from the last two issues now has an answer. CLASS ACT — Classified Access to Address Critical Technology — is a 36-month pilot, and DIU states it will coordinate industrial security support to guide each selected performer through the facility-clearance process. That is the part that makes it unusual: a clearance sponsored ahead of a specific contract requirement, rather than after one. Previous issues declined to characterize that because the postings did not say it. They say it now.

The eligibility floor has not moved, and it is still the first thing to read. The vendor call is for nontraditional defense contractors with no current or prior facility clearance and U.S.-citizen key management, at TRL 7 or above, with at least $10 million in equity raised and at least $2 million in annual revenue. The investor call asks for at least $100 million in available capital and an average investment around $5 million. Most small defense businesses do not clear that floor, and nine days is not enough time to pretend otherwise. If you are under it, the useful move is not a rushed submission. It is to note where the Department chose to put the floor, because that is a statement about who it thinks it is short of.

Small Business Playbook — What a Bye Week Is Actually For

A bye is not a week off. It is the only week nobody is making you react to something. Three things worth doing with it, none of which require Congress.

1. The set-aside rule does not take a recess — and it is not a number you can memorize. FAR 19.502-2(a) requires that an acquisition of supplies or services above the micro-purchase threshold and not over the simplified acquisition threshold be set aside for small business when the contracting officer reasonably expects offers from two or more responsible small businesses competitive on price, quality and delivery — the rule of two. Notice what the regulation does not contain: dollar figures. It defines the window by reference to two thresholds that are adjusted for inflation on their own schedule, so the band moves without the rule changing a word. Look up the current values in FAR 2.101 rather than quoting a number you learned three years ago, and understand that neither a recess nor a continuing resolution suspends this. Routine buying continues while Congress is away, and this is the band most of it falls in.

2. Fix the record while nothing is due. The quiet failure modes in this business are administrative, and they surface at the worst moment. Check that your SAM registration is active and not inside its renewal window, that your representations and certifications reflect what is actually true today, and that the NAICS codes on your profile match the work you are now bidding — size standards are revised, and a code that made you small two years ago may not. Pull your CPARS entries and read them as a contracting officer would. If an evaluation is wrong or unrebutted, the window to do something about it is now, not during a proposal.

3. Rebuild one capture file against primary records. Not five. One. Take the pursuit you most believe in and reconstruct it from sources rather than memory: the actual award history and obligated amounts, the incumbent and when its period of performance ends, the office that holds the money and which appropriation it is, and whether the next action needs anything Section 102 or 104 bars. Most capture files are built from a summary somebody forwarded. Five uninterrupted weeks is exactly enough to rebuild one from the record, and that is the file that will still be right in December.

The Briefcase — One Page for a Five-Week Recess

There will be no congressional news to react to between now and November 9. That makes this a planning month, and the plan fits on one page.

If you are already on contract, keep performing. A recess is not a stop-work order and neither is a continuing resolution. Your contracting officer is still working, and so is the rest of the buying apparatus below the legislative line.

If you are waiting on a new start, a first production lot or a rate increase, nothing between now and December 11 creates one. Plan against December at the earliest, and treat a second continuing resolution as a live possibility rather than a pessimistic one.

If you sell into permitting, environmental review, transmission or site work, November 9 is your date, and the text to read is the September 30 package — not the bill number on the calendar.

The Final Whistle

Washington flew eight hours to lose a quarterback in the first quarter. Congress stayed home and lost nothing, because it was not holding anything.

The continuing resolution runs to December 11. Sections 102 and 104 run with it. The first vote back is a permitting bill wearing a tax bill’s number, and it is thirty-six days away.

The bye is real. The question is whose it is.

How I Help Small Defense Businesses

You may be the owner, the business-development lead and the person checking payroll — all before lunch. The challenge is deciding which opportunity deserves the time your team actually has, especially in a five-week stretch when Washington produces no news and it is tempting to produce none either.

Through DoD Industry Advisor, I help small defense businesses turn market information into a pursuit decision: examining the buyer, the funding signals, the incumbent and the timing; identifying the gaps in your position; and building a practical plan for what to do next. I also help with proposal and briefing materials when the pursuit calls for them. Explore DIA’s services.

Bring one opportunity you are weighing and the decision you need to make. We can scope the work around whether to pursue it, what needs more evidence, and where your effort belongs over the next 90 days.