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The political problems are surprising, given the bill’s easy approval, on a voice vote, in the Senate Commerce Committee in October. The full House overwhelmingly passed a similar measure in September.

Autonomous vehicle developers and their allies in Congress say the legislation is necessary to head off a growing patchwork of state regulations that complicate the rollout of self-driving cars. Supporters of the federal bill also fear a lengthy delay in the federal bill could even give a boost to autonomous-vehicle development in other countries.

Already, the delay is providing a window of opportunity for critics of the legislation, who are stepping up efforts to block it. They contend new data from makers of self-driving cars in California underscores their concern that the bill jeopardizes consumer safety by giving autonomous-vehicle developers too much leeway.

At least three senators, all Democrats—Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut,

Dianne Feinstein

of California and

Edward Markey

of Massachusetts—have placed holds on the Senate legislation, citing safety and other concerns. That means sponsors likely won’t be able to get the unanimous consent they would need for a quick floor vote, absent major changes to the legislation.

Companies supporting the legislation include

Alphabet
Inc.

unit Waymo,

General Motors
Co.

and Uber Technologies Inc. Industry officials say they remain confident they can overcome the short-term hurdles. They expect negotiations to begin soon on a plan to move the legislation to the floor, after weeks of member-to-member discussions.

“We strongly support the bill reported by the Senate [Commerce] Committee and are optimistic about its chances of passage by the full Senate,” said Paul Hemmersbaugh, GM’s chief counsel for autonomous vehicles. “It is not unexpected that a few senators would place a hold on a bill [and] the likelihood of any bill obtaining unanimous consent these days is remote. Our sense is that there is overwhelming bipartisan support for the bill in the Senate as a whole.”

The companies and their allies in Congress argue that concerns over safety could delay deployment of a technology that many actually expect to save lives in the long run.

The technology—and the legislation to move it forward—are “too important to fail,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman

John Thune

(R., S.D.), said in a statement Friday. He said he remains convinced that the bill will become law “even if it takes a debate on the Senate floor.”

Critics of the bill say it could expose motorists and pedestrians to unreasonable risks by effectively shielding the still-nascent technology from either federal or state safety regulations.

Consumer advocates believe the bill’s pre-emption provisions would knock out existing safety laws in states like California, which has already required testing of autonomous vehicles to include backup drivers. The federal legislation also would prevent states from adopting new safety standards, such as requiring an autonomous vehicle to pass a driver-safety test.

Sen. Blumenthal said that the AV Start bill as currently written doesn’t provide enough safety protections for drivers, passengers and pedestrians.

“Autonomous vehicles are still an emerging and unproven technology,” Mr. Blumenthal said in a statement. “Congress’s job is not to give auto makers a carte blanche but to foster innovation while making sure there are safeguards that ensure safety can’t take a back seat.”

Mr. Markey’s concerns focus more on standard-setting for preventing cyberattacks and protecting consumer privacy.

Ms. Feinstein’s office declined to comment. But people familiar with her concerns say they are more far-reaching than her colleagues’.

The delays appeared to be encouraging a renewed push by some consumer groups to hold up the bill. California-based Consumer Watchdog sent a letter to senators on Friday calling on them to block the AV Start bill “unless it is amended to require enforceable safety standards.” It added that “any AV legislation should require a human driver behind a steering wheel capable of taking control.”

The letter cited recently released data from California that the group said shows that in most cases, “the vehicles cannot travel more than a few hundred miles without needing human intervention.” The data show how often the self-driving functions are disengaged because of an unexpected complication, such as sudden lane blockages or cars that are parked incorrectly.

Industry supporters of the legislation contend that the disengagement data are being misinterpreted, and show that the vehicles are being tested carefully. The disengagements don’t necessarily reflect safety issues, they say.

Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com

Government departments are going through a major refresh of antiquated IT systems, including switching more services to the cloud and boosting cybersecurity. That has triggered a round of deal-making over the past three years among providers seeking greater scale to handle ever-larger projects as the government bundles contracts to secure savings.

Other big providers include Leidos Inc., which bought the IT arm of

Lockheed Martin
Corp.

to create an industry leader with annual sales of $10.1 billion, and Booz Allen Hamilton Corp.

CSRA has annual sales of almost $5 billion and among the highest margins in the sector. The company, formed two years ago when Computer Sciences Corp. merged its federal arm with SRA International Inc., has partnered with the web services arm of

Amazon.com
Inc.

to provide government departments with cloud services.

General Dynamics said that CSRA would expand its access to intelligence agencies and that rising federal spending—with the White House due to issue 2019 budget requests on Monday—would reduce the pricing pressure on providers that forced many smaller players to combine.

Falls Church, Va.-based General Dynamics has lagged behind the broader increase in defense stock prices, in part because sales of business jets have remained flat in recent years.

General Dynamics is offering $40.75 a share for CSRA, whose shares closed at $30.82 Friday and surged 32% premarket Monday to trade around the offer price. Including the assumption of $2.8 billion of CSRA’s debt, the deal has a value of $9.6 billion.

General Dynamics said it expects the deal to close in the first half of 2018, increase earnings and generate annual pretax cost savings of about 2% of the combined company’s revenue by 2020.

Write to Doug Cameron at doug.cameron@wsj.com and Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com

Investors like to see a company’s earnings fully backed by the cash its operations are generating. It demonstrates the company has the money to pay shareholder dividends and invest in its own future. But stretching out payments of the “transition tax” on foreign earnings will muddy that comparison, accounting experts say.

Many companies, including

Microsoft
Corp.

MSFT 0.22%

and  

Johnson & Johnson
,

have already made the choice to stretch out the tax bill. That meant their 2017 earnings were reduced, but the year’s cash flow wasn’t, making it appear earnings were more fully backed by cash flow. Then, for the next several years, the companies’ cash flow will take a hit, while earnings aren’t affected, making it appear earnings are less backed by cash flow than they really are.

Microsoft, for example, says it will pay a transition tax of $17.8 billion. That amount was assessed against last year’s earnings, but cash flow wasn’t affected. But starting this year, it will be. Under the law, companies can make payments over eight years on a back-loaded schedule that puts the maximum burden, 25% of the total, in year eight.

For Microsoft, that will cut as much as $4.45 billion off the company’s yearly operating cash flow, which would be a significant portion of the $39.5 billion in operating cash flow Microsoft posted in its most recent fiscal year that ended last June. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.

The disconnect between earnings and cash flow will force analysts and investors to do some reverse-engineering of company numbers to make sure they’re comparing apples to apples. If they don’t do so—or are unaware of the need to—they could be misled.

“This is something investors need to pay attention to,” said

Sandra Peters,

head of the financial-reporting policy group at the CFA Institute, which represents chartered financial analysts who work with individual investors.

The mismatch could be particularly important when analyzing companies whose operating cash flow is below their earnings.

Mondelez International
Inc.,

for instance, said when it announced fourth-quarter 2017 earnings in January that it had a $1.3 billion tax on its accumulated foreign earnings, payable over eight years. That suggests its highest annual payment would be about $325 million, or 13% of the $2.6 billion in operating cash flow Mondelez posted in 2017, an amount already short of its $2.9 billion in net income.

Similarly,

McDonald’s
Corp.

had a $1.2 billion charge for the transition tax, suggesting it will pay a yearly maximum of $300 million if it pays over eight years. The company had $5.3 billion in operating cash flow for the 12 months ended in September, compared with $5.7 billion in net income.

A Mondelez spokesman said the company is “continuing to evaluate the accounting impact of the legislation.” A McDonald’s spokeswoman declined to comment.

The transition tax is being assessed on profits that U.S. companies have generated overseas for years and held there, rather than having them taxed at the old U.S. corporate tax rate of up to 35%. As part of the tax overhaul, the U.S. is relinquishing its right to tax those profits and shifting to a “territorial” tax system, which will levy taxes only on profits generated in the U.S.—but not before assessing a one-time tax on past earnings from the old system.

There are yet other complicating factors. Apple Inc., for instance, had previously accrued a big obligation for U.S. taxes on foreign earnings, anticipating it would repatriate some of those profits someday, so in effect it had already accounted for much of the $38 billion in taxes it owes.

And some companies are also realizing gains from deferred tax liabilities, which take less of a bite for a company now that the U.S. has lowered its corporate tax rate.

It’s also likely that companies’ earnings and cash flow will both rise by the time the bulk of the transition-tax payments become payable. J&J is scheduled to pay about $10 billion over the next eight years, implying a maximum yearly payment of $2.5 billion that would take a slice from the $21.6 billion it reported in operating cash flow for the 12 months ended Oct. 1. A spokesman said the company thinks an increase in its cash flow because of the lower tax rate will help “offset” the tax payment by the time it’s due.

Write to Michael Rapoport at Michael.Rapoport@wsj.com

Much of its success in undercutting traditional players with faster and cheaper shipping options is due to its investment in its own in-house logistics network. “We were less enamored of its furniture business than its logistics strategy,” says

Brendon Osten

of Venator Capital Management, which has 5% of its portfolio in Wayfair. “It’s an interesting strategic advantage.”

That advantage may not survive new competition. Amazon has built warehouses to handle furniture, which it says is one of its fastest-growing categories. It also has partnered with local furniture stores and launched two furniture brands.

Walmart

and Target also have made investments that could help them launch furniture efforts. Meanwhile, traditional furniture retailers are stepping up online sales. Around half of sales for retailers

Restoration Hardware

and

Williams-Sonoma

are now online.

More important, even though it sold $4.3 billion worth of furniture in the past four quarters, Wayfair needs to spend aggressively on advertising to bring in customers. Its total advertising spending for that period was $500 million. Only around 9% of Wayfair’s traffic comes from consumers searching for the brand, according to L2 Inc. By contrast, Restoration Hardware and Williams-Sonoma get 60% to 70% of their traffic from brand-modified searches, L2 says.

A recent study by marketing professors

Daniel McCarthy

of Emory University and Peter Fader of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School found that Wayfair spends about $69 to acquire each new customer, but only earns $59 back from each acquisition. Using a method of valuing publicly traded retailers that focuses on customer retention, Professors McCarthy and Fader conclude that Wayfair is overvalued by 84%.

Wayfair’s weak brand loyalty may be tied to its lack of stores—there is still value in sitting on a sofa before buying. That would help it fight off Amazon but may leave it vulnerable as traditional furniture retailers gear up for e-commerce.

Wayfair’s biggest risk is its need to raise cash to offset its losses. It has sold stock twice in the last two years, followed by a convertible-bond offering in September. (The company reports full-year earnings later this month). For the first three quarters of 2017, free cash flow was negative $114.7 million—about the same as the first three quarters of 2016. At the end of the third quarter, Wayfair had $610 million in cash and short-term investments.

The stock market selloff makes Wayfair more vulnerable. “The problem is when the market goes down and there are businesses with good economics as alternatives,” says

Dan McMurtrie,

managing partner of investment firm Tyco Partners, who has shorted the stock in the past.

The company’s poor economics have made it one of the most shorted stocks in the internet retail sector, with 18% of available shares sold short. Those betting against Wayfair thought they had a winner last November, when shares fell 20% following a widening in net loss to $76.4 million from a year-earlier $61 million. Investors sent the shares down 20%, but they soared soon after, more than wiping away the losses.

Wayfair’s best bet, and the biggest risk to short sellers, is that it will be acquired. As the company’s valuation climbs higher, though, it will become more expensive to buy Wayfair than to clone it. The company’s investors should pray that someone makes that economic mistake.