You can’t call this year’s federal budget debate a bust because that implies there actually has been a debate.
None of the issues that have created so much fiscal agita the past few years – the national debt and federal budget deficit, for example – are being discussed even though many still consider them to be problems.
There is one exception: The fiscal 2015 appropriations --the 12 federal spending bills that have to be enacted in some form by October 1 to prevent a government shutdown – are still on the congressional agenda.
But the appropriations weren’t supposed to be that big of a legislative and political hassle either. The budget deal engineered last December by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) included a spending level for fiscal 2015 that has already been agreed to by Congress. That why, even without a budget resolution (where the spending level is usually set), the assumption has been that this year’s appropriations process would be relatively easy.
Add the declaration made by the House and Senate Appropriations Committees that they wanted to get all of the individual bills adopted this year instead of relying on a continuing resolution to keep the government operating and it’s easy to see why budget process wonks have been rationalizing all year that most and perhaps all of the 2015 appropriations would be adopted on time.
The problem with this analysis is that this year’s appropriations process is anything but rational; it’s highly political in a hyper-partisan environment that will get even worse in the next few months as the 2014 election get ever closer.
Being rational about 2015 federal spending is really just wishful thinking.
Consider the following:
The three calendar months that exist between the end of June and the start of fiscal year 2015 seem like a great deal of time but there are only about 30 legislative days left before October 1.
Even in what used to be the customary legislative situation when Senate filibusters weren’t used for virtually all legislation, 30 days wouldn’t be enough time to get many of the spending bills to the White House. With filibusters now standard operating procedure, getting even the one or two relatively easy fiscal 2015 appropriations passed by the House and Senate and through conference to the president’s desk will be time-consuming and very difficult.
A proposed Senate deal on considering three of the 12 appropriations in a package broke down last week when Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) couldn’t agree on the procedure for the debate.
Congressional Republicans are now starting to make noise about shutting down the government over the carbon emissions standards announced several weeks ago by the Environmental Protection Administration. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) primary loss to a tea party candidate has given additional impetus to this plan’s proponents.
With most earmarks now a thing of the past, getting votes for an appropriation bill is much tougher than it used to be. Appropriators just don’t have the same power they used to have to twist arms and convince members to support them.
Appropriators always say they want the coming year’s appropriations enacted by October 1 so saying it this year shouldn’t be taken as big a sign that anything has really changed.
According to Congress.gov, as of last Friday the House had only passed 5 of the 12 fiscal 2015 appropriations and the Senate had adopted none. That means that there haven’t been conferences between the two houses on any of the spending bills let alone re-votes in the House and Senate on the compromises that are eventually reached. Some members these days consider compromise to be a political sin and the equivalent of collaborating with the enemy. In this environment, even small differences between the House and Senate on some bills may be insurmountable by October 1.
With elections analysts saying Republicans have a chance to take control of the Senate in November, the GOP appears to be less interested in completing appropriations before the next Congress begins. Instead, the increasingly discussed congressional Republican strategy is to put a continuing resolution in place until early next year so the hoped-for GOP majority will make the final spending decisions.
The GOP strategy actually is for two continuing resolutions. The first would last from October 1 to around mid-December. Then, depending on the election results, the second would be in place from mid-December to around mid-March.
The fact that this once again would make it difficult for federal agencies and departments to do their work through the first six months of the year doesn’t seem to be a consideration. Neither does the difficulty in implementing spending cuts or increases or major policy changes when a final appropriation isn’t enacted until the fiscal year is half over and the guidance you need from the Office of Management and Budget comes weeks later.
And the fact that all this is happening not because of policy differences but because of politics shows how absolutely crazy this situation has become.
