The federal government’s partial shutdown is slated to run for a third week, affecting around 800,000 government employees and resulting in potential cash-flow deficit for contractors, Federal Times reported Friday.

Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president of the Professional Services Council, said a cash-flow shortage will result from contractors not getting paid by the government despite having workers needing to perform services under contract. Chvotkin noted that the financial impact of the shutdown will vary depending on the size and cash reserves of affected contractors, with small businesses facing greater risk.

Previously, the federal government experienced a 16-day shutdown in 2013 where some contractor employees were laid off and furloughed workers were not paid during or after the shutdown, the Government Accountability Office said in a report. Senate Democrats have pointed out that thousands of employees from the State Department, Internal Revenue Service and Department of Agriculture are working without pay.

House Democrats passed two bills this week in a bid to end the partial government shutdown without funding President Trump’s border wall, New York Post reported Thursday.

One bill would provide temporary budgeting to eight of the nine closed agencies until September, while another would fund the Department of Homeland Security until Feb. 8. However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted the chamber will not support construction of Trump’s wall.

“We’re not doing a wall,” Pelosi said. “The fact is a wall is an immorality. It’s not who we are as a nation.” Without the wall’s funding Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the upper chamber will not “waste its time” to pass the House proposal, CNBC reported Thursday. 

White House issued a statement on Thursday warning that Trump’s advisers would recommend that the president veto the Democratic bills. The president “cannot accept legislation that provides unnecessary funding for wasteful programs while ignoring the nation’s border security needs,” the White House said. Bipartisan congressional leaders expect to meet with White House officials on Friday to discuss Trump’s requested $5B funding for the border wall.

The U.S. Navy has tested a new Littoral Combat Group concept for a coordinated deployment of disaggregated forces, USNI News reported Thursday. 

In late 2018, the service branch deployed San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS Somerset along with Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer to support ground forces in South America. The U.S. 3rd Fleet said the Littoral Combat Group 1 tested the command and control of assets under a single commander. The deployment enabled the Navy to learn how attack and transport ships can support ground forces in certain operations, such as law enforcement detachment and humanitarian assistance.  
The Navy plans to use the lessons learned from the test to create a proposal to use the LCG concept in future operations. The service is also working on how the Marine Corps can battle for sea control from ashore by coordinating submarines, surface ships and ground forces.

Senate approved a bill that would require the Energy Department to launch a program aiming to use analog, non-digital and physical systems to protect U.S. electric power grids from cyber attacks, Nextgov recently reported. The Securing Energy Infrastructure Act would provide $10M for a two-year pilot program led by Energy’s national laboratories and backed by the agency’s industry partners.

The bill also includes establishing a new federal working group to assess the recommendations from the program. The group would include representatives from the departments of Energy, Homeland Security and Defense, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. The Senate agreed to provide $1.5M to fund the working group.

Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Jim Risch, R-Idaho, introduced the bill in 2017.

“For years we’ve seen the danger of cyber attacks grow as bad actors pursue larger and more sophisticated incursions on our vital systems, but the federal government’s response has not matched the severity of these threats,” King said. “This commonsense, bipartisan bill is an important step in the right direction, and will help protect America’s critical infrastructure from devastating attacks before they happen,” he added.

The House has yet to vote on a similar bill introduced in the past year.