Comment: Is Congress just avoiding its boring budget chore?

By Betsey Stevenson / Bloomberg Opinion

While the political debate in the U.S. is focused on who will be the next speaker of the House, what it will mean for next year’s election, and Republican disarray in general, too little attention is being paid to Congress’ failure to do its main job: approving a budget for the federal government.

Congress did not follow its own process and pass appropriations bills in time for the new fiscal year on Oct 1. Instead, at the last possible moment, it passed a stopgap measure that essentially allows the government to keep doing what it has been doing, extending funding for existing programs for another 45 days, of which about 30 days remain.

Congress did not consider the pros and cons of various programs. Members did not pore over the thousands of pages of agency budget requests to consider whether each government agency has a coherent plan to provide services that the public both wants and benefits from. They did not look at the U.S.’s fiscal situation to decide how to balance spending and revenue. They did not consider the growing entitlement programs that leave most government spending outside of the annual budget process.

What Congress did, essentially, was give itself an extension on its homework. It has also given its members a platform to rail against out-of-control spending and growing government debt, even as its actual actions have no impact on either.

It is tempting to argue that Congress has recently become broken, unable to perform one of its most important functions as outlined in the appropriations clause of the Constitution: writing and passing laws that allocate (or “appropriate”) money for specific purposes. In reality, however, Congress is late on these bills all the time. In the past 50 years, it has passed a budget on schedule only four times.

And not only is Congress chronically late, but it also fails to follow the schedule for a sensible budget process that Congress itself created. The debate over how much the federal government should spend should start almost a year before a new budget is needed. The first deadline, which Congress usually misses, is passing a budget resolution by April 15. The budget resolution is not binding, nor is it signed into law; it is simply an agreement between the House and Senate on how to proceed.

And here we arrive at the fundamental problem: There’s no way around it; the budget process is difficult, yes, but also very boring. Fiscal responsibility, long-term planning, difficult trade-offs; this is what budgeting is all about. Yawn. And it’s not just you: Senators and representatives get bored, too. Political drama is so much more fun. Shutdown! Throw out the speaker! Fight for liberty! These dramas are much more entertaining.

If the U.S. is going to address challenges such as the projected inability to meet Social Security and Medicare obligations 10 years from now, the shortage of affordable child care, and the necessary trade-offs that helped America solve child poverty, then walk away from a solution, then Congress has to do better. It has to roll up its sleeves and govern.

It’s not impossible. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) releases a budget every year. It is the work of many people, mostly career government workers, who do roll up their sleeves. Budgeting is a statement of priorities, so people will have different views about which programs are deserving of scarce tax dollars. These need not be angry, hateful debates. They should be polite and recognize that no one gets everything that they want.

Congress likes to complain that the U.S. is spending too much, or spending on the wrong programs. But when it comes to spending, it has largely abdicated its responsibilities. Congress is like a teenager who has failed to clean their room complaining that they can’t have friends over because their room is a mess. Stop complaining and clean up.

Of course, voters have a responsibility too: We need to stop rewarding members of Congress for being dramatic and start expecting them to be more boring. That means electing people who are willing to read budgets, negotiate and get their work done on time.

If that is not who voters want in Congress, then there need to be changes to the budget process. The OMB could have more authority. There could be automatic revenue increases and spending cuts when the debt hits a certain level (unlike the current debt ceiling, these would actually trigger changes to the deficit). There could be a bipartisan budget committee of wonks that does the work for Congress.

Congress averted a shutdown this time. Yet it now seems to be on a path toward this same crisis in November. Once again, businesses and the government will need to postpone their actual work to do the work of preparing for a shutdown. Once again, there will be speeches and articles about how costly a government shutdown will be. It’s past time to end this cycle of government budget dysfunction.

Betsey Stevenson is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. She was on the president’s Council of Economic Advisers and was chief economist at the US Department of Labor.