End Government Shutdowns

The party that causes a government shutdown always loses the battle for public opinion. Always.

As we listen to calls by some in the Freedom Caucus for a government shutdown on October 1, 2023, it would be wise to consider past failures. Instead, Congress should enact three simple reforms to help end the madness that has become our dysfunctional federal budget process.

Exactly ten years ago, on October 1, 2013, House Republicans were responsible for a government shutdown that lasted nearly three weeks. Their goal was to force a defunding of Obamacare, which their base voters supported. The problem? The Democrats controlled the Senate, and President Obama was not going to sign legislation defunding a program unofficially named after him. 

From the beginning, it was a fool’s errand and ended in abject failure 35 days later.

Interestingly, almost all the verbal abuse by the conservatives was aimed at fellow Republicans. Senator Ted Cruz claimed a vote not to shut down the government was “affirmatively voting to fund Obamacare.” Former Senator Jim DeMint threatened to fund Sen. Mitch McConnell’s primary opponent. When the effort failed, Conservatives turned their fire on then-Speaker John Boehner, who was gobsmacked by the fact that Sen. Cruz and his colleagues had no fallback position beyond the defunding of Obamacare.

In other words, there was never a chance for success. There wasn’t even a plan for success. It was, as I wrote then, “The Charge of the Right Brigade,” with the same ending as the famous poem whose title I paraphrased. The gallant cavalry gloriously displayed unsurpassed courage, honor, and bravery, only to die in a pointless and accidental charge.  

The gallant cavalry gloriously displayed unsurpassed courage, honor, and bravery, only to die in a pointless and accidental charge.  

The only thing that saved Republicans from more significant political damage was that in November, the online Obamacare rollout turned into a technological nightmare, at least muffling the sounds of “I told you so” echoing across the country.

Washington should memorize a maxim: “The party that causes a government shutdown always loses the battle for public opinion.” Always.  

Congress should reform the budget process so government shutdowns never happen. Here are three ideas that Congress should consider.

Automatic Continuing Resolutions

The deadlines in the current budget process are ripe for partisan exploitation. One party can use them to exact concessions from the other and hold up appropriations for unrelated budget items. An easy way to end the incentive for a budget shutdown would be to pass a law requiring an automatic continuing resolution if appropriation bills are not passed by the start of the fiscal year. Since one of the main incentives for delaying the passage of appropriations is the leverage a government shutdown creates, an automatic continuing resolution eliminates the possibility of a shutdown.

Members of Congress are introducing legislation along these lines. Senator James Lankford (R-OK) has introduced the End Government Shutdowns Act. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has introduced a similar bill. House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) has introduced a bill to do the same thing in the House. This legislation provides an automatic continuing resolution for 90 days at the previous year’s levels if an appropriation for some activity or office has not been adopted by October 1. After that, the funding is cut by one percent every 90 days. It would prevent a shutdown, and the spending reduction would provide a strong incentive to finish the normal appropriations bills, which could fund the government at adequate levels.

An automatic continuing resolution would end the practice of using government shutdowns as leverage for policy debates. It is a powerful option since both parties have funding priorities they want to protect. Republicans might wish to increase defense spending, while Democrats may be willing to make a deal in exchange for hikes in healthcare spending. Both sides in this example have potent reasons to complete the budget process on time. The idea is to change from the current state of affairs that creates an incentive for a budget shutdown to one that creates an incentive to complete the budget process.

Biennial Budgeting

Automatic continuing resolutions are a stopgap and cannot replace a functional budget process. Biennial budgeting should be the centerpiece of a reformed budget process. Biennial budgeting switches all or part of the congressional budget process to a two-year cycle rather than the current annual one.

Every two-year Congress would have its own budget and two years to complete the required authorization bills. One variation of biennial budgeting would require the entire budget process, including appropriations, to be completed every other year. Another would have the budget resolution every other year, but lawmakers would wrangle through appropriations bills annually. Decreasing the frequency of one or more steps in the budget process can eliminate the opportunities for time-consuming legislative conflicts. Lawmakers can then use the time they spend on appropriations for other priorities.

This reform has been discussed for decades and is a fix that many people in both parties have supported. Biennial budgeting should be a major and relatively uncontroversial part of any reform package.

Changing the Fiscal Year

Under the category of “Who are we kidding?” Congress should accept reality and change the start of the fiscal year to January 1. Congress never completes its work by October 1, and given that the entire process is too big and too complicated, it should not surprise any of us. Congress has not passed the budget on time and according to law since 1996.

Typically, the budget process is initiated by the President submitting a budget on the first Tuesday in February. President Biden did not submit his budget until March (President Obama was the worst – always late by months). Then the Congressional Budget Office and the House and Senate Budget Committees are supposed to review the President’s request, hold hearings to get the views of all the Committees, and come up with a budget blueprint by mid-April that must pass both Chambers (the President does not sign a budget resolution). In the next six months, according to the 1974 Budget Control Act, all authorizing committees are supposed to pass reauthorization bills that, in theory, become the basis for 12 appropriation bills. All these bills must then pass both Chambers and be signed into law by the President before October 1. In fairness to Congress, it’s practically a miracle that it ever worked. But in the highly polarized Congresses of the 21st Century, the government has never completed the budget process on time and according to law. 

 Making January 1 the start of the fiscal year would buy Congress another three months, lengthening the appropriations season to 11 months. If Congress passed a biennial budget, it would allow 12 months in the second year of a Congress to complete the appropriation process. Making this change also takes the end of the budget season away from the end of the campaign season, which heightens the chances for political shenanigans around such a critical function of Congress.

The arguments for extending the fiscal year based on experience over the last two decades are close to undeniable: Congress so often does not finish its appropriations until December, so changing the fiscal year would conform the budget process to how lawmakers work today.

Next Steps

Reforming the budget process is not simply a matter of procedural changes. The written rules are essential, but the way Congress follows these rules should also be considered part of the budget process. The government could have brilliant rules but would have no effect if Members didn’t follow them. Yet the experience over the last few years shows that the procedures that incentivize shutdowns are usually championed by party extremes, much to the frustration of the political center of Congress. The ability of the extremes in either party to disrupt the Congress disproportionately to their numbers can be reduced by these reforms.

But those reforms make little sense if Congress can’t keep the government open. Shutdowns weaken the American people’s confidence in government and undermine America’s image in the world. Members of Congress can advocate for significant tax increases, or they can advocate for giant budget cuts – but no Member, regardless of ideology, can pass budget policy unless the system works. It is time to reform what has become a dysfunctional process and create a system by which Members of Congress can implement the priorities of their constituents in an orderly and timely way. Congress must seriously reform its budget process instead of going from showdown to catastrophe and back again.

Probably, though not with certainty, Congress will pass a short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) on September 30, hoping to pass a massive omnibus appropriation bill sometime in December (which is its own problem). However, there is also a strong possibility that there will be a government shutdown like there was in 2013. CRs have become the norm (there have been 200 CRs in the modern budget era), but there have also been 22 government shutdowns of various lengths over that same period.

This year’s failure is very disappointing considering the new Chair Kay Granger (R-TX) of the House and new Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) of the Senate Appropriations Committee have done tremendous work moving all 12 appropriation bills in Committee. But without bipartisanship, few, or perhaps none, of these bills will likely be signed into law by October 1.

Whether Einstein said it or not, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome. Congress needs to end the insanity and pass some fundamental budget reforms that result in a rational, deliberate, and transparent budget for the United States.

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Extra: Congratulations to Walter Oleszek on his retirement from the Congressional Research Service after 55 years. Dr. Oleszek has been a prolific writer on Congress, authoring the classic Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process, which is required reading for my graduate class. He also co-authored Congress and its Members with Roger H. Davidson (also required reading for my graduate students) and Congress Under Fire: Reform Politics and the Republican Majority with C. Lawrence Evans.  

His is a well-earned retirement, and we can only hope he will have the time and inclination to share his acquired wisdom with Members of Congress and those who want to see the most important branch of government succeed. Without Congress, there is no check on the Executive – and an unchecked President would soon become an authoritarian ruler.