Critics: Spending bills need scrutiny
Lawmakers decry lack of successful budget process in Congress.
— Think way back WASHINGTON to 1994. The Cleveland Browns were in the playoffs, “Forrest Gump” and “The Lion King” were
hit movies, and Justin Bieber was in his birth year.
It’s also the last time Congress spent federal dollars the way it’s supposed to.
In the 23 years since, Congress has scrambled each year — usually unsuccessfully — to meet its deadline for passing its 12 discre
tionary spending bills, which pay for everything from agriculture to the legislative branch to Defense.
Last year, not one individual spending bill passed the House or Senate. Instead, Congress passed a series of extensions of previous spending bills, finally pass-
ing the $1.1 trillion bill to pay for fiscal year 2017 last week — with half of the fiscal year over.
The result was no anomaly: According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, not one appropriations bill has been enacted on time since 2009.
“This is the only constitutionally mandated duty Congress has every single year,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of the federal spend
ing watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Yet they really fail at this fundamental task.”
Ellis said Congress has passed all of its spending bills on time just four times since the current budget system was created in 1974. In 1996, the deadline was met, but only after several bills were lumped together in a single appropriations bill.
“Clearly something is not working,” he said. Members of Congress are
among those who criticize the annual dance.
“I think it’s a broken process,” said Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Troy, the newest member of Ohio’s congressional delegation, who watched Congress vote to delay the 2017 spending bill three times since he was sworn in last June. “This is the primary responsibility of Congress — to hold the purse strings.”
The results are often cha- otic: Because of disagreement over the federal spending process, Congress has shut down the government or faced a government fund-
ing gap 17 times since 1976 — most recently in 2013.
One tactic used to avert a shutdown is called a continuing resolution, or CR. Essen- tially it’s a continuation of the prior year’s spending, albeit with a few tweaks. Critics say old programs receive minimal scrutiny, whether or not they are the best use of taxpayer dollars. And if there is a new program that is a better use for those dollars, good luck getting it approved.
“It’s not like they’re going to come up with $1.1 trillion worth of new things to spend
the discretionary budget on,” said Ellis. “A lot of stuff – I won’t say it’s on autopilot,
but I will say it builds on what was previously spent.”
Former Rep. David Hob- son, a Springfield Republican who spent many years on the House Appropriations Committee, says flatly, “I don’t like CRs. There are a lot of things in there that I don’t think get the light of day like they should.” That process, jamming
through spending authorizations to meet a deadline, “is really an abdication of the basic responsibility of Congress under Article One of the Constitution to appropriate
money,” said Tom Schatz, president of the fiscally conservative spending watchdog Citizens Against Government Waste.
Ellis agreed: “Continuing resolutions are wasteful,” he said. “They force agen- cies or delay agencies from making decisions because
it’s harder to hire, harder to authorize travel or new bud- get expenses that might be necessary.”
Although few argue the system is performing as it should, there is widespread disagreement on which party is to blame.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, points his finger at Republicans, saying they “have made a cottage indus- try of injecting uncertainty into the economy.”
“You can’t like the way this crowd is running the govern- ment,” he said.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said the issue is indicative of a larger problem.
“We just can’t seem to get to yes anymore,” he said. “The country’s so hopelessly divided ... I think you see that reflected in the budget process.”
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat, believes the change is more cultural. Most members of Congress have never actually seen the system work the way it’s supposed to, she said.
Kaptur, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said before the process collapsed, lawmakers had listening sessions in con- gressional districts. They’d bring in witnesses who were experts on what was being paid for. They would “listen to the public exhaustively,” she said.
“You should never have every bill wrapped up in a
mass — what is it, a 1,600- page bill,” she said of the spending bill that passed Congress last week. “You should have 12 separate appropriations bills that are passed one by one, amended on the floor, with open rules, which means any member can try to amend what the committee and subcommit- tee have done.”
Schatz said Congress has no real incentive to change
the current system. “There are no consequences for failing to pass the appropriations bills,” he said.
Some suggest that tweaks to the system might help. Congress has long considered —
but not adopted — a system of biennial budgeting, which would create a budget for a two-year period, rather than the current one-year period, similar to what the state of Ohio does.
Portman, who backs a bien- nial process, has introduced a bill that would create an automatic continuing resolu
tion to keep spending flowing even if Congress misses the deadline to pass a spending bill. Under his bill, funding would be reduced if Congress still hasn’t passed a spending
bill after 120 days — a penalty for not passing spending bills on time.
He said his bill would prevent the political jockeying that has caused both sides to hold the spending bill hostage. In the past, fights about policy issues including Obamacare and abortion funding have helped spur government shutdowns.
But Ellis said ultimately the institution itself has to change.
“In the end, no matter what’s the structure you create, it’s still about lawmak
ers being willing to get the job done,” he said.