The wages of the CR sin

Quick, can anyone tell me how many continuing resolutions Congress has
passed this year to keep the government running? Do many Americans
even know what one is? These continuing resolutions — or CRs, in
Washington parlance — have quickly become the rule rather than the
exception of how Congress keeps the trains running during the previous
years. The sad part is they were never meant to last longer than a few
days or perhaps even a few months, at their worst.

While we’re at it, how many times has Congress violated federal law in
not passing a budget by the requisite date in February each year? I
haven’t seen any police at the front door of the Capitol ready to lock
the thugs up.

The point here is these perceived minor infractions and interruptions have serious consequences on how our nation operates, particularly the federal bureaucracy.

CRs, by their very definition and construct, are rudimentary instruments — designed to be simplistic in nature and very brief. This “tidiness,” if you will, is what makes CRs so attractive to D.C. lawmakers. After all, they can’t possibly pass a budget along with 13 corresponding appropriations bills. Why in the world would anyone believe the Congress could move a detailed spending plan outside of those parameters?

It took a private conversation with a fairly senior bureaucrat recently — one who’s at least in charge of an operating budget — for me to fully appreciate just how nutty CRs can make federal agencies.

This individual tells me that, each time a CR is even planned, paperwork must be compiled to anticipate contingencies. Monies won’t come down the line as they were promised or even budgeted. That means new plans must be drawn up on how to spend existing dollars. And if there are purchases for, say, Q4, well, you’d just as well put them on hold or push until 2012 before anything can be determined.

New arguments for existing funds must be drawn up. And since CRs by their nature represent a continuing of the funding, and no new funding — then federal dollars must be re-prioritized and shifted around to cover gaps in, say, security measures or new experimental programs.

So is it all just paperwork and more staff time? Well, yes and no. That seemingly innocuous paperwork that will only waste a fed’s time might appear insignificant, but think of it this way — it didn’t have to be this way in the first place! If Congress had only stepped up and done its work, then no bureaucrat would have had to waste precious taxpayer dollars rearranging monies that were already in the queue to begin with.

Am I arguing for more federal spending since, in the absence of a CR, there would de facto be more funds? Heavens, no. But what I hate more than additional spending is the needless wasting of existing federal monies.

And therein lies another sin of this Congress that indirectly affects all of us. Continually punting on first down, as this ragtag bunch of policymakers does, is harming the ability of those within the federal workforce to do their jobs. They don’t care about Republican versus Democrat; not at that level, at least. They have a job to do. And they’d much rather spend it focused on their areas of expertise than bent over a spreadsheet of numbers that will now have to be adjusted because of the ineptitude of a political behemoth called Congress …