Remember your classmates who sketched out their autumn science fair projects before school even started — and the rest of us who waited until the week before the fair to make a papier-mache volcano? How about that major essay that was assigned in September, but you waited until Thanksgiving weekend to write it? Yes, the world is filled with two types: some planners and many procrastinators.
Congress, it seems, is just like the rest of the country — populated with more procrastinators than planners. I know it’s tough to come to a consensus, addressing every member’s unique concerns, balancing one caucus against another. But once again, keeping the government open, which should be a noncontroversial, annual legislative function, is running up against a last-minute deadline. And what are our representatives doing? From my experience, most are probably waiting in the wings, getting third-hand information about what’s really going on. They show up at caucus meetings; they listen, occasionally they weigh in. They want sensible direction from their leaders, and most of them simply want to be able to vote “yes” on something and move on.
The Dec. 3 funding deadline predictably resulted in another short-term measure as Democrats try to negotiate a long-term funding agreement for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 — something that hasn’t been done on time in decades. We have become accustomed to governance by continuing resolution: According to the Tax Policy Center, 1997 was the last year that all 12 appropriations bills for the federal government were passed by Oct. 1. In a majority of the 20 years of this 21st century, no bills were passed by that date.
Since 1974 there have been 21 funding gaps that resulted in full or partial government shutdowns. They have often been used to make policy demands that have nothing to do with funding basic government operations: abortion access (1970s); spending cuts (1981); Medicare (1995); Obamacare (2013); immigration (2018). Here we are again with some Senate Republicans threatening a shutdown over vaccine mandates — even as the omicron variant has appeared in the United States. One has to ask: Is this any way to run a government?
Well, of course not.
As a rank-and-file member of the House, I lived through the 17-day shutdown in October 2013. With 85,000 federal workers and as many government contractors in my district, those 17 days were painful: We saw missed mortgage payments, lost child care, health-care bills piling up, lines at food banks. A couple of months later, I spent New Year’s Eve with my fellow members at the National Archives, awaiting a deal to avert a “fiscal cliff” that would have resulted in automatic tax increases for most Americans. We ended up taking a rare New Year’s Day vote, with Republican Speaker John A. Boehner depending on Democrats to achieve passage.
These days, the deadlines just keep piling up. The looming debate over raising the debt ceiling, simply to pay bills we have already racked up, is another consequence of this broken process. A temporary reprieve was reached last month, but another showdown approaches in mid-December. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) now appears to be negotiating, though he had signaled previously that there would be no Republican votes in favor of raising the limit. In a predictable repeat performance, Congress will reset the debt ceiling to honor the full faith and credit of the nation, but not without heartburn in (another) 11th hour.
The negotiations to bring President Biden’s Build Back Better plan to conclusion initially faced self-imposed deadlines that came and went. Nevertheless, lawmakers keep pressing forward as Senate Democrats are determined to close the deal. The ultimate deadline is the 2022 midterm elections. The one hope for Democrats is to get their work done with enough time to make their case to the American people. When families get child-care tax credits and affordable prescriptions, when road, bridge and water projects start happening, Democrats will have a brief opportunity to let people know what they’re getting and who delivered it. McConnell is hoping Democrats keep arguing among themselves. Every day that Democrats delay is a win for McConnell.
I don’t know whether today’s Congress is better or worse than those of decades past. Having served on the inside, and now sitting on the outside, I do know that it’s not working. I suspect that the combination of hyperpartisan division in the country and the violence of Jan. 6 is contributing tremendously to the lack of ability to reach consensus in this Congress. Whatever the cause, the fix has to come from the American people demanding more from their elected leaders.
We don’t want members of Congress to be ordinary procrastinators like the rest of us. We want Congress to do what we so often cannot: make a plan and get it done on time. Stop interrupting our holiday season with the specter of shutdowns. Be better.
