The appropriations process in the House and the Senate is stalled. The main culprit for the delay is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), with an assist from House leadership. The main beneficiaries of the delay may be opponents of spending reforms. They stand to gain if the impasse is resolved in the usual Beltway fashion, with a continuing resolution or an omnibus spending bill. The taxpayers could win if Republican congressional leadership is willing to do something bold and different.
If regular order is followed, each chamber is supposed to pass 12 appropriations, or spending bills, that cover different areas of government spending. The Senate has passed none of its bills. Reid and his fellow Democratic senators are blocking Senate consideration of spending bills unless the spending caps agreed to in 2011 are changed to allow higher domestic spending.
{mosads}Senate Democrats claim that Republicans are using the Overseas Contingency Operations fund in the Defense appropriations bill to fund their Defense priorities while avoiding the caps. So Reid is using the Republican maneuver as an excuse to try and renegotiate the spending caps and hike domestic spending. Until they get what they want, Senate Democrats are blocking spending bills from coming to the Senate floor for a vote.
On the other side of Capitol Hill, the House was making progress on its spending bills. This year, the House passed six of the spending bills, and was on track to finish most of the bills before the August recess, but House leadership had to bring floor action on the appropriations process to a halt. Leadership pulled the Interior spending bill from floor consideration on June 9 “after the House moved to vote on an amendment to the measure that would continue to allow the Confederate flag to be displayed in certain federal cemeteries.” The amendment was offered “at the request of leadership.”
Action on the remaining bills in the House has stalled as a result. The Financial Services bill was supposed to be considered the week after the Interior bill, but after action on the Interior bill was stopped, the Financial Services bill was pulled from the schedule. No more spending bills have come to the House floor for a vote.
There is a looming deadline for action on the spending bills. The fiscal year for the federal government ends on September 30. If these spending bills are not wrapped up by then, Congress will have to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded for the new fiscal year at the previous year’s fiscal levels. This patch is meant to give Congress the time to finish working on their spending bills or move an omnibus spending bill or a number of smaller minibus spending bills.
What is likely to happen is that a continuing resolution, or a number of them, will be moved to keep federal funding going until sometime in December. The House and the Senate will try to finish their work on spending bills in the interim. When they fail to make substantial progress, Congress may pass an omnibus spending bill that will lump all 12 spending bills into one. That omnibus may be considered right before the Christmas recess, creating a manufactured crisis by leadership. Such a trajectory also pressures members of the House and Senate into voting yes on what is likely to be a bad bill.
Before Congress gets to this cliff, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-Ky.) should take the option of an omnibus off the table. Financing the government by an omnibus under these conditions is one of the least responsible ways to fund the government. It violates regular order and fails to allow more detailed scrutiny of spending measures. The omnibus option makes conservative reforms to spending impossible under such a closed process, and increases the chances that goodies for special interests will be included in the bill. To remove the omnibus as an option would be to govern as fiscal conservatives.
With an omnibus no longer a factor in the appropriations process for the time being, Republican leaders should pass continuing resolutions of no more than a month duration if individual bills cannot pass both chambers by the end of September. This process would continue as the House and Senate try to pass bills by regular order.
Following such a path will allow Republicans in Congress to highlight how much the government spends, that it has grown so much it requires 12 massive spending bills to fuel it, and keep the issue of government spending as part of the debate in a presidential year. Consider it “Schoolhouse Rock” for the indebted generation: a monthly primer about the fiscal and procedural calamity that has become our federal government.
Republican congressional leaders can teach and inspire voters by showing courage in the face of financial crisis if they forgo the omnibus. What better way to draw a distinction between their fiscal responsibility and the reckless approach of the Democrats who seeks big government in perpetuity no matter what the cost. Voters will see that Republicans are the party of fiscal restraint, regular order and challenging the way taxpayer dollars are routinely wasted in Washington. It may be the only way to shrink spending and grow the conservative majority.
Siefring is president of Hilltop Advocacy, LLC, and a former Republican House staffer. Follow him on Twitter @NeilSiefring.