After Congress comes back from recess next week, it has five legislative days to come to an agreement on a stop-gap spending measure that prevents the government from shutting down.
Certainly there are a number of other policy priorities competing for lawmakers’ attention — repealing Obamacare, comprehensive tax reform, foreign affairs, etc. Keeping the government running will allow lawmakers to continue to focus on these important issues.
The best course of action for Congress is passing a clean spending agreement that provides funding for the federal government past April 28, avoiding a government shutdown and protecting past promises to cap spending. Lawmakers should resist the temptation to approve a bill that breaks the overall cap on discretionary spending for FY 2017, which is $1.1 trillion.
This upcoming decision on a stop-gap measure is a test on lawmakers’ appetite to control spending. Myriad important spending decisions loom over this summer — FY 2018 appropriations, negotiations surrounding the debt ceiling, a trillion-dollar transportation and infrastructure plan, supplemental defense funding. If Congress breaks its past bipartisan promise to cap discretionary spending on this upcoming bill, then American taxpayers have little reason to believe that they will be willing to do so on these bigger upcoming spending fights.
In 2011, lawmakers made a bipartisan commitment to get Washington’s spending and debt under control. In exchange for a debt limit increase, they agreed to tie their own hands and promised to reduce spending over the next decade by imposing hard caps. America’s current fiscal path is unsustainable and these modest caps on discretionary spending have been the only meaningful restraint on federal deficits over the past decade.
Six years later, those promises still matter to hardworking Americans. Congress owes it to us to honor them by maintaining the overall spending caps.
Christine Harbin (@ChrissyHarbin) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is vice president of external affairs for Americans for Prosperity.
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