Spending bills: Chaotic breakdown
WFor the past 20 years, the House and Senate have been unable to pass all of the spending bills individually on time by Oct. 1. Instead, they have had to either pass patchwork bills or extensions of previous spending bills to keep the government operating. Last fall, even that didn’t happen. The government shut down for 21⁄ weeks.
2 Critics say the breakdown in the spending process reflects larger dysfunction in the House. Where lawmakers were once bound to their districts and regional priorities, they’re now increasingly bound to their parties, including the parties’ most-extreme factions.
“They can’t get tax reform done, they can’t get immigration reform done, but this is actually the one thing they know every year that they’re going to have to do,” said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a taxpayer watchdog. “And so it’s inexcusable they don’t get it done.”
The House spending committee was once a place where, love or hate the results, things functioned, parties worked together and deals were hatched.
But now, it’s bogged down — or has been held hostage — by the fights occurring outside the committee.
“I now consider the House to be a fact-free zone,” said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. “All you get is political spin, and it’s just very sad for a great legislative body. There is no deliberation.”
That the spending process rarely works is well-documented: Even before 1994, Congress rarely passed all of its spending bills on time. But those close to the process say it has deteriorated even further in recent years. Where Congress was once able to pass at least a few spending bills lumped together, it increasingly has opted to pass extensions of the previous year’s spending bills. In fiscal 2012, for example, Congress passed five separate continuing resolutions. In fiscal 2011, it passed eight.
By passing such extensions, critics say, Congress is ceding its authority to determine how federal money is spent. Instead of serving as a steward of taxpayer dollars, critics say, they’ve thrown up their hands, slashing funding indiscriminately or just relying on older spending measures — the equivalent of submitting the same term paper time after time. ASHINGTON — If there’s a crystal-clear illustration of how the U.S. House of Representatives is broken, it might be in how its members spend taxpayers’ money. • It’s not that those we send to Washington spend too much — that’s a conversation for another story — it’s how they spend it. • The House is supposed to pass 12 spending bills — on everything from highways to education programs — iron out the differences with the Senate and then send them to the president for final approval by Oct. 1 of every year. • That’s the School House Rock version. But what the House, where all the spending bills originate, has adapted since 1994 could be more accurately described as the Punk Rock version — something close to anarchy — loud, messy and chaotic.
The elimination of earmarks three years ago by House Speaker John Boehner — money targeted at specific projects in congressional districts — also has had an unexpected effect. While earmarks were wildly criticized as “pork,” they also served a few purposes.
First, they gave Congress an additional opportunity to have a say over spending. By giving that up, says former U.S. Rep. David L. Hobson, R-Springfield, who served on the Appropriations Committee, Congress has allowed the president to take the reins on spending.
“The government isn’t performing its functions as well today as when the power of the purse was dispersed between the House, the Senate and the president,” he said. “Today, the power of the purse is all the president.”
It also stripped Boehner, a Republican from West Chester, of what had traditionally been a tool used by speakers to control unruly members. For his part, Boehner has vowed that won’t change.
It also might have helped foster polarization. Earmarks were once a glue that could bring otherwise disparate lawmakers together in an effort to push regional priorities. But even lawmakers who once banded together around regional issues aren’t as inclined to do that anymore, said Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Niles, a member of the House Appropriations Committee. He said it has become a little harder to get all 16 members of the Ohio congressional delegation to even sign onto letters supporting Ohio projects.
Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Genoa Township, said the spending process has become more difficult in part because the majority has become narrower. Since 1994, the House majority, Republican or Democrat, has only been larger than 50 twice— in 2008 and 2010.
He said that a combination of factors — the emergence of the tea party and an emphasis on cutting spending, the abuse of earmarks and the subsequent ban on them, and smaller majorities — has made it increasingly difficult to pass spending bills.
The breakdown of the spending process is a microcosm of larger problems in the House, say those watching the process.
Gone are the days when the House forged a consensus and approved environmental laws in 1970 and 1990 that have made the air cleaner and healthier.
There is almost no chance that this House and President Barack Obama could agree on a tax-reform package in the way that Republican President Ronald Reagan and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski compromised in 1986 on a landmark tax bill that reduced income-tax rates and eliminated scores of deductions. A tax-reform proposal floated by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., earlier this year was met with a resounding thud.
House Republicans say, in fact, that they have passed bills. They blame the Senate.
“We have passed over 150 pieces of legislation that are sitting in the Senate,” Tiberi said.
Said Rep. Steve Stivers, RUpper Arlington, “I explain to school kids that it’s the House’s job to pass bills and the Senate’s job to kill bills. I had to come to Washington to realize how good the Senate is at doing their job.”
And while that’s partly true, it’s also true that a large number of bills approved by the House are more politics than policy.
“The House passes a lot of stuff, but a lot of the stuff they’re passing is messaging legislation,” said Steve LaTourette, a Republican from northeastern Ohio who retired from the House in 2012 because of his frustration with congressional paralysis. Much of what they pass, he said, “is not a serious legislative effort.”
The American public has noticed: A Gallup Poll of the American public taken between May 8 and 11 found that 80 percent of Americans disapproved of Congress’ performance.
“I think the reason we’re being scored as a body so low is because of the lack of confidence that we can get anything done,” said Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Jefferson Township, who said she’s tried to use her first term to reach out to Republicans.
But this year, lawmakers are hopeful: It’s an election year, which means no one has an incentive to shut down the government and risk being blamed.
They’re also hopeful because last year’s budget deal — agreed upon by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.— set a top-line spending level. By doing so, the House was able to avoid the timeconsuming fights over how much to spend and get to work months earlier than it has in the past.