Federal offices opened on Thursday without a shutdown, and Washington will treat that as an accomplishment. It should not. The House passed a stopgap bill, 370-48, that holds agencies at last year’s spending levels through Dec. 11. That is the safety net. The fall is what came before it.

In the past 12 months, the government stopped operating three times. The first lapse ran 43 days, from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, 2025, and the Congressional Budget Office estimated it cost the economy about $11 billion in real GDP. A four-day shutdown followed from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3, then a 76-day lapse at the Department of Homeland Security from Feb. 14 to April 30. FedTools totals 123 days. A budget process that fails that often is not under stress. It is broken.