09.29.16

EDITORIAL: Federal budgeting process a perpetual failure

Congress needs to come up with a way to perform its most basic job

Another September ends with another failure of Congress to do its basic job — pass a federal spending plan.

On Wednesday, the Senate and House each passed a continuing resolution to keep the federal government, which operates on an Oct. 1-Sept. 30 fiscal year, funded through Dec. 9, a month after Americans elect a new president. The resolution passed by wide margins — 72-26 in the Senate and 342-85 in the House — and maintains spending at 2016 levels for the most part.

Some in Congress say this is just a delay, but it’s difficult to think congressional minds will be clearer on the job just over two months from now. It also sets up the potential for another visit by Scrooge at the end of a politically charged year in the form of a budget showdown and another partial government shutdown. With the acrimony that has developed in the fight between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for the keys to the White House, one can imagine that the losing side will be licking its wounds and looking for a way to save face and relevancy. Compounded with the fact that political victors lately have been anything but gracious, the idea that there will be sudden bipartisan camaraderie in the December air seems as unlikely as a Christmas snowstorm in Albany.

One thing has become undeniable — the current way of constructing a federal budget doesn’t work. The reason may be the process is intrinsically flawed or members of Congress simply don’t have the will or ability to do the job, but the budgeting process, as it stands now, is dead on arrival every September.

“Once again, we are witnessing a complete breakdown of the budget and appropriations process,” U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., said last week. “It has become nearly impossible for Congress to fund the federal government on time. In fact, the current budget process has only worked four times in the past 42 years. Congress has not been able to fund the federal government without a continuing resolution for 19 years in a row.”

Perdue noted that the so-called “grand bargain” he opposed last year, which was supposed to result in Congress doing its budgeting job this year, didn’t work. Again.

“Congress has not completed its most fundamental job on time and the only release valve is adding more debt and more spending,” he said. “… Congress cannot continue to legislate from crisis to crisis. We cannot allow the budget and appropriations process to come to a grinding halt every year. We cannot allow gridlock to prevent funding the federal government on time. We certainly cannot afford a temporary fix that does not produce real results for the American people.”

For the record, Perdue was a no vote Wednesday, while the rest of Southwest Georgia’s congressional delegation — Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson and U.S. Reps. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, and Austin Scott, R-Tifton — voted in favor of the resolution in their respective chambers.

“Right now, we have a budget crisis,” Perdue said Thursday in a conversation on the Senate floor that he led with eight other GOP senators. “We have a debt crisis. Fixing the budget process will not solve the debt crisis, but we will not solve the debt crisis unless and until we address the dysfunction in our budget process.”

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said during Thursday’s conversation, “We have to begin the process of fixing this broken [budget] system, and we need to begin now. In 2026, our country turns 250 years old. Wouldn’t it be a marvelous goal if by that time we not only had this process fixed, but it was actually working once again?”

Indeed, it would be marvelous to see Congress properly handle this, its most basic function. It’s time to toss this dysfunctional budget process and replace it with a workable solution.


By:  The Albany Herald Editorial Board
Source: The Albany Herald