Bipartisan bill would end government shutdown threat

By Wadi Gaitan*

03 Nov 2023, 14:28 PM EDT

Younger generations—and new Americans—could be forgiven for thinking that government shutdowns are a feature, not a bug, of the governance process in the United States.

For decades we have watched Congress and the president lurch from one crisis to another, with spending out of control. And the way lawmakers spend our tax dollars has become a national joke.

But it wasn’t always this way and it doesn’t have to be this way now.

Government shutdowns became a standard feature of the annual appropriations process only in 1980, after the Carter administration reinterpreted a 19th-century law. Congress never intended for a failed appropriations process to result in a shutdown.

To fix this, the House should immediately adopt the bipartisan Preventing Government Shutdown Act, which would provide for automatic continuing resolutions to keep the government open while also requiring Congress to remain in session until the bills are enacted. of regular spending law.

For those who would be happy to see the government shut down, if it meant some spending discipline could be applied, good luck. Using closures as a control tactic almost never works. A shutdown fight often results in hardship for the American people, but has never resulted in a cut in government spending.

So we know that shutdowns result in bad policies and bad budgets. They are also bad from a political point of view.

Voters oppose shutdowns, even if it means enacting policies they care about (which almost never happens anyway).

Reviewing the budget and appropriations process should be a long-term goal. But Congress can act now to end the threat of government shutdowns.

When the latest crisis came to a head in late September, lawmakers wisely decided to fund the government rather than shut it down.

But that action did nothing to prevent the next confrontation, which would occur in less than a month. And, in fact, it exacerbated the growing spending and debt problem facing our country.

Last fiscal year’s deficit doubled from the year before, $966 billion more than the CBO projected when President Joe Biden took office. It is the largest deficit, without an emergency, in the history of the country.

Interest rates remain near record levels; The 10-year Treasury yield is rising. It is a sad irony that interest costs are now the main drivers of rising public debt.

Inflation spiked in 2022, slowed a bit for a brief period, but has now risen again over the past two months.

The price of gasoline, groceries and other necessities remains historically high, costing the average American household an extra $955 this month, according to the Joint Economic Committee. That’s more than $11,000 a year just to maintain the same quality of life.

This comes at a time when Americans have seen three consecutive years of declining real incomes.

It’s no surprise that more than half of Americans say inflation, the economy and Washington spending are their top concerns.

The supposed influence of a government shutdown does nothing to address any of these issues. In many cases, the threat of a shutdown makes matters worse by hindering progress on other priorities, preventing policymakers from addressing our country’s most pressing challenges.

We need to stop governing through crises and get Congress and the president back to working together to pass spending bills in an orderly manner.

Funding the government is the most basic function of Congress, and it has been failing at it for two generations.

It’s time for this nonsense to end and for Americans to have a government that works. Passing the Government Shutdown Prevention Act would be a step in the right direction.