Congress

Congress remains of two minds on how to best continue its work. The Senate plans to return Monday. Expect an extremely skeletal staff with most staffers continuing to work from home. The House will remain out of session and a return date has not been set.

The contours of a fourth stimulus package, stimulus 4, are simply not known. There is no shortage of wish lists in circulation. DoD’s $20B list landed at OMB without a whisper. President Trump touts the need for an infrastructure stimulus. House Democrats want more funding to reach those service industries feeling the direct impacts of no business and now record unemployment. Leader McConnell favors letting the first stimuli efforts simmer as the 3T stimulus debt hangover has hit conservative Republicans in his caucus.

The FY21 legislative process will continue. Committees are working remotely and attempting to figure out the logistics of the mark-up process, when committees formally mark their puts and takes to the President’s budget request. July 4th has been a convenient target to make public for several committees. There is little basis for that date.

If you are working the FY21 legislative process, and are a client of mine, you are as well positioned as you can be. If you are wondering how to make a late entry, that train has left the station. Congress has demonstrated it can do anything quickly when it is sufficiently motivated. November elections have a way of clarifying procedures. There is every reason to believe the FY21 legislative process will complete on as bumpy a path as it always does – but it will complete.

A Word or Two on Strategy

How’s your strategy? Remember that SWOT analysis technique you learned in school? Go back and check your list of opportunities and threats. Do they make any sense today? Remember opportunities and threats are often external. Both are readily present if you are looking.

If you are operating to a strategy that was put in a nice notebook on your credenza more than six months ago, run it through the shredder. It is obsolete and its assumptions have been completely erased. There will be no “new normal” after this. There is just a new horizon and a new set of conditions to exploit or navigate. If you are still focused on the next 60 days of payroll, you are missing a window of opportunity to make a strategic shift right now, and your competitor is “closer than it appears” in your rearview mirror.

If you’d like to discuss your specific strategy, step right up.