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Stop us if you’ve heard this before: After weeks of uncertainty, lawmakers in Congress appear to have potentially reached a last-minute funding deal that will avoid a costly and unnecessary partial government shutdown. But some uncertainty remained Wednesday as the actual text of that massive bill had yet to be released.
This tired refrain has sadly become the norm for the federal funding process. Congress temporarily avoided a shutdown in January only to turn around and face the same challenge in March.
We really can’t say this enough, and we keep having to: Congress needs to stop going from one shutdown cliff to the next. They need to return to so-called regular order, all but a distant memory, where each of the 12 individual appropriations bills are considered and passed individually by the start of the fiscal year in October — not mashed up into massive packages six months into the fiscal year.
Relying on short-term continuing resolutions to essentially keep the government on autopilot has been a way of at least avoiding shutdowns, but it is an irresponsible approach that creates uncertainty and fails to make forward-thinking funding decisions. The only thing worse would be to actually let the government shut down, which has significant costs for the U.S. economy.
Despite admirable attempts to return to regular order in the Senate appropriations committee, where each of the 12 funding bills were passed on a bipartisan basis before the end of last summer, that productivity and consistency has not spilled over to the full Senate of the House of Representatives.
Differences between the House and Senate, magnified and complicated significantly this past year by the haphazard leadership situation in the Republican-led House, have made compromise difficult despite the clear need for it in a divided government. Former Rep. Kevin McCarthy lost the speakship, essentially, because he recognized (if belatedly) the reality of working with Democrats when Democrats control the Senate and White House.
So as we once again beg for a better process, we believe the biggest change must come from House Republicans, who need to stop treating pragmatism like a defect and fully embrace the hard work of actually governing. There is certainly enough blame to go around, with President Joe Biden once again missing the deadline to submit his budget proposal for the next fiscal year — something former President Donald Trump and other presidents from both parties failed at times to do as well. It is past time for the deadlines to mean something again.
With all of this in mind, it is almost laughable that members of both parties have been accusing each other of brinkmanship in the push to avoid a partial shutdown later this week. Those exchanged barbs are almost laughable, not because the situation is funny, but because the brinkmanship is neither new nor one-sided. Both parties have allowed it to become the defining feature of spending decisions in Congress. And both parties have a responsibility to help right the ship.
That means avoiding this current shutdown threat, and immediately working to make sure the next round of appropriations bills can be passed, individually, before October. The end of the fiscal year will be here before we know it, and we don’t want to be writing this same frustrating message once again.
