It’s that time again – when all the US legislators get together and fail to do their jobs. The fiscal year will close on September 30, and Congress still hasn’t passed a government funding bill. But that’s nothing new; this complete failure to legislate is an annual occurrence. In its job description, funding the government is perhaps the most important recurring constitutional responsibility Congress has. Instead, we routinely meet the end of the fiscal year with a continuing resolution, which keeps the government up and running – sort of – until either full-year funding bills are passed or another continuing resolution resets the timer yet again.
Passing appropriations bills that authorize federal agencies to draw money from the US Treasury to pay bills before the end of the fiscal year is crucial to the smooth running of the federal government. However, that has happened only four times in the last 48 years.
Of Course There Will Be a Continuing Resolution
If there is one failure of Congress that is the most harmful to national security, it is the failure to pass a defense budget on time. Legislators pat themselves on the back despite not doing the job they are elected to do. When they can’t make the required date ending the fiscal year to pass appropriations bills, they pass a continuing resolution (CR) or “stop-gap” spending measure. That’s the spending legislation that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) couldn’t get passed in the House on Sept. 18.
“On Wednesday, the House failed to pass the continuing resolution spending bill, with the SAVE [Safeguard American Voter Eligibility] Act attached, that would have funded the federal government beyond the end of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 and through March,” The Daily Signal reported. This language ensures that only citizens vote in federal elections. It seems like a law everyone could get behind. Not so, since overwhelmingly Democrats are against it. Every year some speed bump is raised in the road toward funding the government. What is unusual this year is that most Republicans wanted the SAVE Act included, but a handful – 14 to be exact – voted either against it or “present.”
However, as the time grows short to the end of the fiscal year and the shutting down of at least part of the government, the frenzy to get a CR passed increases in magnitude. No one on Capitol Hill wants to be blamed for shutting down the government, furloughing the hordes of government employees, and jeopardizing the ability of those working in critical national security positions to protect American citizens. Consequently, a continuing resolution will be passed; it won’t have the SAVE Act attached, however. It will not be what everyone wants, but it will prevent a government shutdown. Closing down the federal government has been rare, happening only five times since 1995.
A shutdown isn’t the only consequence of Congress failing to do its job. The CRs carry extremely restrictive conditions for federal agencies. When the government is operating under a CR, there can be no new program starts. This hurts the Department of Defense since structured and disciplined programs require predictable funding. CRs insert uncertainty that drives up costs and decimates schedules.
Additionally, operating under a continuing resolution, a federal agency cannot spend more in the new fiscal year than it did in the previous one. Any new budget initiatives dependent on funding increases must be put on hold until an annual appropriations bill is passed. A full-year CR means no new programs and stagnant spending at last year’s funding topline.
Believe it or not, there was a time when funding bills passed without much fanfare. Congress passed the first spending bill, the Appropriations Act (HR-21), on September 29, 1789. Note the date. The nascent legislative body passed a spending bill on time before they knew what “on time” meant or even realized there was a fiscal year, but it believed that passing funding legislation in a timely fashion was a good thing. Unfortunately, such adherence to sound financial stewardship has been in short supply since then and is absent most of the time.
Keeping with the low public profile of the congressional budget process historically, “Continuing resolutions – when first passed in 1876 and up to 1981 – were noncontroversial interim spending measures designed to keep the government afloat until the enactment of the regular appropriations,” according to a William and Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Faculty Publication. After 1981 CRs have often become political cudgels to drive spending or other legislation that would otherwise have met resistance. CRs provide the vehicle for attaching substantive legislation since the stop-gap spending measures are not subject to House rules, which do not allow attachments of significant legislation to appropriations bills.
Knowing the House rules, a cynic might get the idea that our congressional leaders are incentivized not to do their jobs on time so as to have the chance to throw all manner of non-appropriations bills into a CR or billions of non-essential spending into the follow-on omnibus spending bills – the latter being the more popular. It is more difficult to get legislators’ pet constituency projects into individual authorization and appropriations bills during the regular budget process before the fiscal year’s end. An omnibus appropriations bill is generally the legislation ending a CR, which gathers together all the agency appropriations bills into one.
Omnibus Spending Bill Allows for Lots of Pork
Sticking in all manner of legislation that did not make it into the base legislation is more appealing. “The omnibus spending bill is loaded with thousands of earmarks, which are line-item funding for specific pet projects directed by members of Congress. Many of these earmarks would advance the Left’s extreme agenda and fund its institutions using the taxpayer’s money,” The Heritage Foundation explained in a commentary titled, “12 Woke Earmarks in Omnibus Spending Bill.”
Though there is much hoopla about the importance of fiscal responsibility and getting the government funded, it really boils down to theater. Congressional representatives don’t simply fail to do their jobs; many don’t want to do the jobs for which the taxpayer sent them to Washington, DC. The CR is the cover so that representative can return to their constituencies and crow about how they passed a continuing resolution saving the government from shutting down. Had they done what they were paid to do on time, members of Congress could go back home to their states and districts and brag about how they did their jobs – enabling the government to carry on efficiently. Wouldn’t that be better?
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.
