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Congress is unfortunately but unsurprisingly hurtling toward a potential government shutdown at the end of the month. House Republicans have been in disarray, the Senate has made some bipartisan progress but also experienced its own setbacks, and people who rely on many federal programs and services face significant uncertainty as lawmakers continue to fail to reach a funding agreement.
This potential shutdown cliff, and the inefficient and costly drama that accompanies it, can and should be avoided. As a bipartisan group of senators including Maine Sen. Angus King has been suggesting for years, it is time for Congress to ditch the shutdown drama entirely. The Prevent Government Shutdowns Act would preclude the possibility of a federal government shutdown by using automatic short-term funding bills, known as continuing resolutions, to prevent a lapse of government funding.
“The bipartisan Prevent Shutdowns Act is not a novel, or partisan, idea,” King, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, said in a recent Portland Press Herald column. “According to the Peterson Foundation, 90 percent of voters — including 91 percent of Democrats and 89 percent of Republicans — are looking for lawmakers to avoid a shutdown that would cause far too much harm and very little good. We must safeguard taxpayer dollars and protect Maine people from the harmful and costly effects of a government shutdown.”
King is an original co-sponsor of the bill, which is led by Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire.
“And contrary to much of the rhetoric, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the last government shutdown did not save our country money — it cost our economy $3 billion,” King emphasized.
While passing this bill wouldn’t automatically solve the current impasse over funding and deliver an agreement, it would take the worst impacts of the continued funding failure off the table. This should be a practically and politically appealing idea across the political spectrum, which is probably why it sports an ideologically diverse group of supporters in the Senate.
A more long term funding agreement to keep the government fully open and functioning seems likely to come from the center-out rather than from the fringes of either party. So we’re encouraged by the bipartisan work Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington have done to get at least the Senate appropriations process back to a more regular and collaborative approach. That momentum needs to carry over to the full Senate and across both houses of Congress, with Collins and other top appropriators continuing to be in the middle of these discussions.
“I’ve lived through shutdowns. They are never good policy,” Collins told Politico last week. All lawmakers, especially Republicans in the House of Representatives, need to hear this message.
Hopefully the bipartisan bill announced on Monday by a House group including Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd Congressional District helps chart a productive direction toward an agreement.
“The only way to avert a shutdown is to come to the table to negotiate a bipartisan agreement,” Golden said in a Monday press release. “Our bill keeps the government open, addresses the crisis at the border, maintains support for Ukraine, and stands with Americans as their communities recover from natural disasters. It is past time for both Republicans and Democrats to do what’s right for the country.”
Members of Congress need to find a path forward to avoid the looming government shutdown now just days away. They also should pass the bipartisan legislation to end shutdowns entirely, for this current funding cliff and future ones.
