Legislatively mandated spending deadlines are nothing more than recommendations in Washington’s bizarre and arcane environment, where a partial government shutdown is perpetually looming.
The 12 financial laws that are meant to support discretionary government spending (defence spending, etc.) have not been formally passed by parliamentarians, despite the fact that the 2024 fiscal year began on October 1.
Tell me about CRs.
Legislators have enacted a number of short laws, known as “continuing resolutions” (or “CRs” in the federal government’s lexicon, which is essentially its own language), in the hopes of reaching a final deal on the larger bills.
The acronym “CR” stands for “continuing resolution,” and journalists often attempt to make it more accessible by calling it a “stopgap” or “short-term” budget bill.
Legislators recently passed yet another one; why?
Congress has been given further time to negotiate spending five months after the fact, thanks to another short-term extension for part of the government that was passed and signed into law this week by President Joe Biden.
This temporary budget package has set a number of deadlines, the most recent of which being next Friday, March 8, for some branches of government and March 22, for others.
Does this happen frequently?
Each year, essentially. Resolutions that remain in effect from year to year are far from rare.
Since its inception in 1977, the federal fiscal year has officially begun on October 1. Over the past fifty years, lawmakers have passed a continuing resolution every year with the exception of three. The last time CRs were not passed was during the 1997 fiscal year, as reported by the Congressional Research Service.
Legislators aren’t even making an effort to get the measures passed on time anymore. There should be twelve appropriations bills for discretionary spending by the federal government. Lawmakers have failed to enact even a single one by October 1 in the majority of years during the last 20 years. Every year since 1997, they have failed to pass half of the appropriations bills by the due date.
They prefer to enact the spending legislation in a single, larger package, known as a “omnibus,” which is usually passed in December or later. Take 1997 as an example; instead of a CR, the budget measures were passed in a single omnibus session. The Government Accountability Office reports that in 2017, the final bills were not passed until after May 1st.
Do you not think it’s preferable to a partial shutdown?
Compared to the alternative—a partial government shutdown—these bills are clearly the better option. Partial shutdowns are often criticised for being inefficient, unneeded, and disruptive.
Contrarily, CRs are a distinct type of event that is both inefficient and disruptive. There will be an impact from CRs even though government activities and services will continue. A number of GAO publications detail the ways in which CRs “slow hiring, create funding uncertainty, and cause administrative burdens.”
When a patchwork of CRs persists for a significant chunk of the year, as it does in this year, those consequences are magnified.
Funding requests from Congress serve solely to direct federal policymaking. Some programmes get more money while others get less. These adjustments typically do not occur with CRs.
“When Congress uses a CR instead of the regular appropriations process, all the thousands of hours that agencies spend on budget planning go to waste,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, testified in 2018.
What is the impact on Americans of all this?
I spoke with AWN’s Tami Luhby about the potential effects on government service delivery of the shaky funding process and the practice of merely using funding levels from the previous year. She detailed the following instances to illustrate her point, claiming that individuals reliant on food stamps and utility assistance are bearing the brunt of the consequences.
LUHBY: Low-income pregnant women, new moms, and young children receive nutrition aid and education through WIC, but this programme is currently facing a $1 billion deficit. The most recent federal statistics show that enrollment increased to 6.6 million in November from little under 6.4 million a year ago.
According to the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning organisation, approximately 2 million pregnant women, new moms, and kids might lose access to benefits if Congress maintains the current budget level for the remainder of the fiscal year.
After years of record-high heating and cooling costs, several states have begun to reduce the amount of federal utility aid they provide to their citizens. The National Energy Assistance Directors Association started tracking these figures when the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, and since then, demand for LIHEAP has reached historic highs due to record-high electricity and natural gas arrearages.
Legislators have recently increased the $4 billion in base financing that LIHEAP receives by several billion dollars. Unfortunately, states can only expect to receive the minimum amount for fiscal year 2024 because the exact amount has not been determined yet. That necessitates a number of measures, like reducing the amount of subsidies received by homes, reducing the number of individuals assisted, or cutting cooling programmes.
What the Biden administration asked for in October—an extra $1.6 billion in funding—is still up in the air.
How about this alternative?
The Partnership for Public Service, an organisation that promotes good governance and has pushed for a two-year rather than an annual schedule for government funding, argues that this is how private sector companies and the federal government should operate.
It’s difficult to encourage creativity or safety if employees are continually getting up and moving about. Another suggestion is to have automatic continuing resolutions (CRs), which function similarly to automatic overdraft protection, so that lawmakers may focus on the more substantial expenditure measures and not the short-term ones.
This year, will politicians find a solution to the financing problem?
In January, the House of Representatives and the Senate were on the verge of a budget agreement that would have limited government spending in 2024 and 2025, as expenditure-conscious Republicans had requested.
Instead of committing to a government shutdown, House Speaker Mike Johnson has done the right thing by keeping the government running and putting the issue off until later by using Democratic votes to support continuing resolutions (CRs) while they work out the contents of the larger package.
Legislators in Washington, DC, have settled on six separate funding bills to be passed by March 8th. These bills cover the following agencies: Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration; Commerce, Justice and Science; Energy and Water Development; Interior; Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; and Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.
Defence, Homeland Security, Labor-Health and Human Services, the Legislative Branch, and State and Foreign Operations are the six remaining appropriations measures that lawmakers want to vote on before March 22.
Many are hoping that they will find a solution before the beginning of next year’s funding process. They will not complete the 2025 spending bills on schedule, so you should not hold your breath.
The Annual Government Circus: Why Do We Repeat This Every Year?
