Government shutdowns are costly and unpopular with the public. Why, then, haven’t legislators adopted any of the proposals to prevent future shutdowns? As it turns out, these proposals would take appropriation powers away from the legislative branch and make it even harder to reach consensus.
The 2018-19 government shutdown was a disaster. It suspended critical government services for five weeks. It cost the nation’s economy $11 billion. It put federal workers and contractors in food bank lines — and while civil servants were repaid eventually, contractors were essentially robbed of more than a month’s pay. It was the longest shutdown in U.S. history, and relations between the White House and Congressional Democrats only look to get worse in the next two years of the Trump administration.
It’s understandable, then, that sensible members of Congress would look to legislate the shutdown out of existence. While the Constitution mandates that Congress appropriate federal spending, the idea that the government would cease to operate in the absence of a spending bill is fairly recent — for nearly two centuries, agencies just kept operating under the assumption that Congress would pick up the bill. This was believed to lead to intentional overspending, and in 1980, President Jimmy Carter requested an opinion on the matter from Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. Civiletti ruled that federal agencies had no authority to continue operations in the absence of an appropriations law.
Mark Warner (D-Va.) and others want to usher in a return to the pre-Civiletti-ruling era with new bills like the Stop STUPIDITY Act, which “takes the aggressive but necessary step of forcing the President and Congress to do the jobs they were elected to do.” If enacted, Warner’s bill would mandate an automatic continuing resolution based on the previous budget’s funding levels, rather than a shutdown.
The merits of this bill are obvious. It would ensure that no matter how toxic the environment in Washington became, the continued operation of the federal government — and the livelihoods of those who chose careers in government service— would not be put at risk.
With an unpredictable Republican president in office and their party’s generally more favorable view towards government offices and employees, the Democrats are natural allies for such a measure. Even some Republicans have spoken out in favor of it. On the surface, it all makes sense.
Why, then, are some Democrats opposed to this idea?
While avoiding shutdowns would be a positive development, removing the onus of appropriations from the House would neuter it as a political body.
“Because we’re appropriators, we should get our work done,” House Appropriations Chair Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) told Roll Call. “If we come together and we can’t accomplish our goals, we should resign from the committee.”
A no-shutdown agreement would have far-reaching implications on policy. One needs only to examine the nature of foreign policy oversight over the last two decades. Congress has been content to sit idly by while the executive branch relies on interpretations of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force that could generously be described as “creative,” primarily because members would rather not take a stand on a potentially unpopular vote.
Given Congress’ record on this and other matters — in which deference to the executive has expanded with little substantive pushback — it stands to reason that a bill to keep the government running in perpetuity would serve as express written consent for members to shy away from real governing. Why should we expect members who have passed the buck on difficult-but-necessary foreign policy decisions to make difficult-but-necessary calls on domestic spending?
The need to pass a budget every year forces regular, critical examination of how much spending is necessary and where it should be allocated. Yes, the budget reconciliation process has arguably been abused in recent years to include non-budgetary issues, like sweeping changes to health care policy. But the power to make changes when developing an annual budget is an important tool to keep in the hands of the branch of government most responsive to the people, especially as invocation of executive power becomes more prevalent.
The incentives behind budgeting
There’s hardly an incentive to cooperate when roughly half the politicians would prefer that the federal government funding face continual cuts.
Of course, a bill to end shutdowns could include an incentive for Congress to do its job. Funding for certain functions could stay in place while funding for others lapses. Or funding could be automatically cut by a certain percentage after a certain time period passes without a bill, as Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) proposed. But the former approach would endanger less politically salient or more politically charged programs, and the latter evokes the image of unpopular (and harmful) automatic sequestration cuts. There’s hardly an incentive to cooperate when roughly half the politicians would prefer that the federal government funding face continual cuts.
Other incentive-based approaches shift the financial punishment of a shutdown from civil servants to politicians themselves. This sounds reasonable on its surface, but it may be even more insidious in reality. Exacerbating the reputation for poor or unstable pay for elected officials only serves to scare all but the wealthy away from running; in the long run, this results in a Congress composed of and staffed by the independently wealthy.
Some may argue that some of these drawbacks are worth preventing a shutdown. And with the multi-billion-dollar price tag and immeasurable damage to the economy to contend with, it’s certainly a discussion to be had. But any bill that would purport to end shutdowns has real long-term risks for our political system, either by normalizing an absence of active governance or by employing poor incentives. Congress would be wise to carefully consider these risks before passing a knee-jerk policy change in light of the most recent shutdown.
Photo of the Lincoln Memorial closed off during the 2013 federal government shutdown via NCPA Photos.
Pat is a writer, editor and general communications professional from Montpelier, Vermont. He works for the university and is on his way to becoming a double Hoya ('14, '19). Pat hopes to use his degree to help improve policy literacy in political communications.