Beltway Buzz, April 10, 2026

Administration’s Proposed Budget Would Boost EEOC, Trim DOL. President Donald Trump has released the administration’s fiscal year (FY) 2027 proposed budget. Although the U.S. Congress sets federal spending levels, the president’s budget outlines the administration’s priorities, thereby providing guidance to federal appropriators. For the Buzz, the FY 2027 budget provides insight into the administration’s labor and employment policy priorities. For example:

• The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) would receive about a 26 percent cut to its budget, despite receiving a funding boost in the previous fiscal year. Sub-agencies such as the Wage and Hour Division and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would be subject to these cuts.
• Further, the remaining elements of the DOL’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) that enforce the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act would be absorbed into an expanded Office of Civil Rights.
• The DOL’s Women’s Bureau—which survived elimination last year—would be eliminated.
• The Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC), currently housed within the Employment and Training Administration, would be elevated to an independent DOL sub-agency in order to “enable OFLC to administer immigration and migration policies, regulations, and programs in a manner that optimizes performance, minimizes unnecessary use of resources, and ensures resiliency and continuity of operations that are customer centered.”
• The National Labor Relations Board would receive a $9 million cut.
• The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) would receive an additional $20 million, indicating that the administration is likely pleased with the Commission’s work.

Ultimately, Congress will have the final say on agency funding levels. Stay tuned to see how close they come to the administration’s requests.

House Lawmaker Wants Vote on Bill to Impose Government-Dictated Contracts on Employers and Employees. On March 26, 2026, Representative Donald Norcross (D-NJ) filed a petition to discharge the Faster Labor Contracts Act (FLCA) from the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education & Workforce. As the Buzz has discussed, the Faster Labor Contracts Act would establish statutory timelines for negotiating collective bargaining agreements with the federal government ultimately setting the contract’s terms if the parties cannot come to an agreement in time. While the bill enjoys limited support of some populist-leaning Republicans, because committee chairs control the legislative agenda of bills within their jurisdiction, the FLCA is unlikely to see the light of day under the leadership of Chair Tim Walberg (R-MI). Under House rules, a discharge petition allows rank-and-file members to force a floor vote on a bill that hasn’t been approved by a committee. Representative Norcross will need a total of 218 signatures on his petition in order to discharge the FLCA from the committee and onto the floor. This would require all House Democrats to sign the petition, along with just four Republicans (there are currently seventeen Republican cosponsors of the bill).

The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace describes the Faster Labor Contracts Act as a “horrible bill” that “would allow government bureaucrats to dictate the employment terms of workers via mandatory, binding arbitration.”

EEOC Releases Annual Performance Report. The EEOC has released its “Fiscal Year 2027 Agency Performance Plan (APP) and Fiscal Year 2025 Agency Performance Report (APR).” The report highlights actions and accomplishments of the Commission from October 1, 2024, through September 30, 2025 (representing the federal government’s 2025 fiscal year). According to the report, these accomplishments include “rooting out unlawful race and sex discrimination arising from or related to DEI programs, policies, and practices; protecting American workers from unlawful national origin bias that places foreign hires ahead of citizens; safeguarding women’s sex-based rights at work; and defending religious liberty by addressing unlawful bias against people of faith.”

While the agency has had politically appointed individuals serving as acting general counsels during the Trump administration, it has lacked a U.S. Senate-confirmed general counsel. President Trump has nominated management-side attorney Carter Crow to fill that role on a permanent basis. Assuming Crow is confirmed, employers should expect an uptick in the enforcement of the agency’s priorities.

Remembering Abe Fortas. Former associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Abraham Fortas, died this week in 1982.After graduating from Yale Law School, Fortas served as an attorney in multiple federal agencies before starting his own law firm in Washinton, D.C. In that capacity, he represented Clarence Earl Gideon in his Supreme Court case (Gideon v. Wainwright), which established a right to counsel in criminal cases under the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment. Although Fortas resigned from the Court in 1969 amidst an ethics scandal, he is known for penning one of the more famous lines in Supreme Court jurisprudence. He wrote the majority opinion in the 1969 case, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, in which the Court found that a public school’s suspension of students for wearing anti-war black arm bands violated their First Amendment rights. Fortas concluded, “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”