In 1996, millions of people danced to the Macarena, watched Independence Day, and marveled at the cloning of Dolly the sheep. That year also featured an achievement even rarer than duplicated livestock: Congress completed the appropriations bills for fiscal 1997 on time.
In each year since, Congress has resorted to passing a continuing resolution that provides the same funding level as the prior year in order to buy time to complete the appropriations process. There have been an average of 5.3 continuing resolutions each fiscal year since 1998, each one lasting an average 142.7 days, or nearly five months. In two years, fiscals 2011 and 2013, Congress resorted to full-year continuing resolutions. Members of Congress therefore have failed for 23 consecutive years to perform the most basic aspect of their job: punctually passing the annual appropriations bills.
In fact, continuing resolutions have long been the rule rather than the exception. In addition to fiscal 1997, legislators passed the appropriations bills on time in only three instances in the past 43 years: fiscals 1977, 1989, and 1995.
For fiscal 2020, the House of Representatives nearly completed its task on time, passing 10 of 12 bills prior to Oct. 1, 2019. The Senate did not pass a single spending bill prior to the deadline. The failure of the two chambers to promptly complete their work resulted in yet another short-term continuing resolution, which was signed by President Trump on Sept. 27, 2019, and provided funding until Nov. 21, 2019.
The frequent use of continuing resolutions is remarkably poor governance. They neutralize the government’s significant buying power. Instead of paying in advance for bulk orders at lower prices, short-term continuing resolutions force agencies to purchase fewer items at a time at higher prices. Continuing resolutions also undermine the effectiveness of the agencies by creating delays and raising costs for multi-year projects, as well as disrupting the hiring of new employees.
Even with the added time provided by a continuing resolution to pass the individual spending bills, legislators frequently resort to passing them bunched together in omnibus packages. The end result is thousands of pages of text, which minimizes the amount of time for members of Congress and the public to digest the contents of the bills.
Making matters worse, the House and Senate rules allowing three days to review legislation before it is considered have gone by the wayside. The “three-day rule” has more closely resembled the “24-hours-and-two-seconds rule,” under which a bill will be posted at 11:59 p.m. on a Tuesday, for example, and voted on just after midnight three calendar days later, at 12:01 a.m. Needless to say, this is an unreasonable interpretation of “three days” and not nearly enough time to review an omnibus appropriations package consisting of several thousand pages.
The inability to adhere to the most basic guidelines of the budget process is one reason for Congress’ unpopularity among voters. Perhaps the message that this behavior is not acceptable will force legislators to recommit themselves to the core responsibilities of their job beginning in 2020 and finally pass the appropriations bills on time once again.
However, given its track record, Congress will likely miss yet another deadline. Taxpayers have a better chance of seeing the third incarnation of Dolly the sheep.
Sean Kennedy is director of research at Citizens Against Government Waste.
