It Goes On and On and On

David Ignatius argues that continuing resolutions – laws that “continue” to fund government agencies at previous-fiscal-year levels – play “havoc with normal management functions such as planning and contracting.” The use of continuing resolutions, Ignatius further argues, is a sign of Congress’s “failure under both parties to do its most basic job – fund the federal government” – which is a “national disgrace.” Hmm. In the words of Mike LaFontaine from A Mighty Wind, “I don’ think so!” Aren’t continuing resolutions a sign that Congress is doing “its most basic job”? I mean, the money still gets appropriated, right? When Congress passes a continuing resolution, the “downside” for bureaucrats is that they don’t necessarily receive more money with which to play as they would like, and the “downside” for appropriators is that they can’t stuff one of the 11 appropriations bills with favors to special interests. To me, those do not sound like “downsides” at all. In fact, there’s an argument that Congress should try to use continuing resolutions more often, not less. Yuval Levin made this argument earlier this year:

One potential disadvantage of a continuing resolution approach is a diminution of Congress’s much-vaunted ‘power of the purse.’ But for too long, Congress has confused its power of the purse with the executive’s authority to manage the daily operations of the government. The federal budget has become a tool of micromanagement, which neither improves the functioning of government nor serves the interests of its constituents. Earmarks and comically specific mandates to the executive are not the power of the purse. Congress, through its power to appropriate, can set priorities for the federal government and require the executive to serve those causes, but a process that hides key priorities beneath mountains of minutiae does not serve that purpose. A budget process that involves necessary changes, rather than a set of massive and indecipherable ex nihilo bills each year, would not reduce the power of the Congress to legislate changes in the way public money is spent. It would merely rein in the capacity of Congress to do so in the dark, and beyond its proper bounds.

Sounds like it’s worth continuing.

It Goes On and On and On

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