Last week, Senate Appropriations Chair Barbara
A. Mikulski, D-Md., signaled her
chamber already has begun to lay the groundwork for an omnibus budget bill in
September, CQ Roll Call reports. Instead of debating on their own merits each
of the 12 spending bills that fund government agencies and programs, Congress
would bundle all of them into one massive package and rush it through the
voting process at the 11th hour.
This type of rushed,
bloated spending legislation is guaranteed to include ineffective programs and
those outside the proper scope of the federal government, as well as giveaways
to corporate cronies and pork projects. Current and future taxpayers will be on
the hook to fund all of them. With a half-trillion-dollar deficit expected to
pile on top of the $17.5 trillion debt this year, Congress’ failure to budget
according to its own rules is egregious.
It was less than two
months ago that House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., expressed
optimism that an early start to the appropriations process would allow
Congress finally to pass all 12 spending bills “on time, on budget and under
regular order.” Mikulski similarly declared the
budget process to be on its way “back to regular order,” and said the Senate
is working at a “brisk pace”.
Fast forward to today.
Nearly all of that optimism has faded as political
maneuvering has all but vanquished the prospect of “regular order” in
the Senate. The House has passed six appropriations bills, which now must move
through the Senate and then be signed by President Obama before becoming law.
The most recently passed House Energy and Water bill faces a veto
threat from the Obama administration, adding further uncertainty to
the process.
We can cue the excuses and
partisan blame game over the next several weeks as the gridlock is likely to
continue. Despite appropriators’ initial momentum, the dysfunction
that characterized appropriations in 2013 seems to have returned.
Unless substantial headway is made, it is likely Congress will resort to a
either a 1,000-plus-page omnibus or a continuing resolution—an extension of
current policy at the current or higher level— to push more than $1 trillion in
spending through the process without due diligence.
Simply following the
budget process Congress ascribed to itself should be obligatory. But Congress
has not passed all 12 12 appropriations bills—each of which funds specific
areas of the government—since 1997.
Editorial comment: The last sentence, above, is not true. In fact, the current crop of Democrats do not have the mental ability to create an actual budget. Think I am only being petty? Well, answer me this: How ignorant do you have to be to have written budget proposals (Obama did this) that have been defeated in the Senate 97 to Nothing and 99 to Nothing, and in the House, defeated by a vote of 414 to Nothing and, last year, 416 to two? How can that be? Obama an intellectual ? - only in the comic book section of the Congressional Record.
And although the process is designed to
foster debate to improve the likelihood representatives prioritize spending in
accordance with the national interest, lawmakers have avoided using the budget
process as intended. Instead, Congress waits until the last minute to use the
threat of a government shutdown to ram through bloated stopgap measures. As
former Budget Committee staffer Patrick Louis Knudsen, put
it:
“Lawmakers no longer miss
budget deadlines; they breach them deliberately and regularly, obliterating any
notion of a fiscal year as the government runs on a series of temporary
spending measures.”
Editorial note: " . . . Congress waits until the last minute . . ." is not true. Only a Democrat Congress does this . . . never a Congress run by the GOP, never. We have not had a budget since Obama took office. Why? Because it opens up a debate on spending, a discussion the Left never wants to have when they are in power.
Lawmakers’ failure to
abide by their own rules erodes democratic procedures and cedes undue power to
bureaucrats in federal agencies. Instead, Congress should return to regular
order and debate the merits of funding certain programs instead of simply
signing off on across-the-board funding increases. To truly revive the power of
the purse, lawmakers should consider a
new budget process that enhances Congress’ constitutional role to limit
out-of-control government spending and debt and reins in the unchecked power of
Washington
Editorial notes: Actually, a new system is not needed. The old system worked fine until the 2010 fiscal cycle - Obama's first. If you haven't noticed, you need to make note of the fact that the Obamanites use the excuse, "We have to pass it now. Things are too important to wait for debate and process and committee reports." They have done this with the Stimulus bill of 2009, the Omibus bill of 2009, and any appropriation bill during his reign.
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