The government shutdown: when the system breaks down

This year has witnessed the longest government shutdown in American History, and its shadow still lingers, 2 months after. This crisis in U.S. politics demonstrates once again the flawed nature of the U.S. Political System.

Many factors were involved in this shutdown, but in this article, I will explain two main factors: the complex budget process and gridlock.

A complex ubdget process

This chart shows government spending for fiscal year 2019 as per the 2019 Budget proposal. A U.S. fiscal year is the period of time in which the fiscal policy of the U.S. government is conducted. It starts October 1st and ends September 30th of the following conventional year. We are currently in the fiscal year 2019, which ends on September 30, 2019.

The U.S. budget process, being responsible for the funding of executive agencies and programs, is definitely central to government operation. Therefore, I will explain this method of appropriating funds to run the government to the best of my ability. The budget process starts with the writing of a full budget proposal by the President, with the assistance of the Office of Management and Budget (a part of the Executive Office of the President which consolidates the president’s recommendations with funding requests from government agencies into a solid budget proposal). Typically, this budget proposal is completed before the first Monday of February, date at which it is submitted to Congress (the bicameral legislature of the United States comprised of the House of Representatives and the Senate). The next step involves the House and Senate Budget Committees, which will analyze the budget proposal in order to write up and vote on a budget resolution outlining the broad totals for government spending. This simple resolution states how much Congress is supposed to spend in each of the 19 broad spending categories. For instance, in the 2018 budget resolution, Congress provided a budget authority (allowed spending) of $557 billion for National Defense and $762 million for Energy. Any differences between the House and Senate versions are reconciled by a conference committee. The broad totals of government spending are then passed on to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. To do this, the Appropriations Committee in both chambers of Congress divides the work between the smaller appropriations subcommittees which comprise it. Each subcommittee is tasked of determining the precise levels of budget authority for discretionary programs of their assigned budget category according to the limits set by the budget resolution. For example, the appropriations subcommittee for defense spending has to break down the broad total for defense spending outlined in the budget resolution to determine the precise spending allowed for all defense-related programs. This is done in the form of an appropriations bill. Once it is written up, all subcommittee members consider, amend and eventually vote on the bill before passing it on to the full Appropriations Committee. The Appropriations Committee reviews it and passes it along to the whole House or Senate, where it is once more debated and voted upon. After both House and Senate pass their respective appropriations bill, a conference committee meets to resolve the differences between the House and Senate versions and produce a reconciled version of the bill. Both houses vote one last time on the reconciled bill and it goes on to the president. In the final step, the President must either sign the completed appropriations bill into law or veto it by refusing to sign it. The president signs each bill after it leaves Congress, rather than waiting until they are all finalized. When all 12 bills are signed, the budget process is complete. This typically has to be done before October 1st, that is the start of the next fiscal year.

Here is a step-by-step summary of the process with deadlines

1. President submits his budget proposal to Congress (1st Monday of February)

2. Congress passes its budget resolution (April 15)

3. House and Senate Appropriations Committees write up and pass their appropriations bills to House or Senate (April 15 to June 10)

4. House and Senate vote and pass all annual appropriations bills (Up to October 1st, but preferably done 10 days before this deadline)

5. All appropriations bills signed by President (October 1st-Deadline for the entire process, start of the fiscal year).

So what does this tedious process have to do with the shutdown pretty much everyone has been hearing about? The shutdown illustrates certain flaws of the US Budget process and the US political system. With regards to the Budget process, the main issue is that it is a tedious and long procedure. Doubtless you found it difficult to understand at first just like I did, and what I described above is just the tip of the iceberg. Not only are there certain intermediate steps and procedures that I left off, but there are many additional problems to consider in a congressional session. Although Budget typically determines discretionary spending, there is also an optional “reconciliation” process which is used primarily as a deficit-reduction tool and enables work on legislation which can affect mandatory spending or taxes. Furthermore, during the budget process, party politics, lobbying and influence from interest groups, as well as differing economic philosophies are also present to make the process even messier. The Budget has to take into account not only the needs of all executive agencies and the programs they are responsible for, but also the interests of parties, interest groups, and basically the whole nation. Setting up the Federal Budget is even more of a nightmare in practice.

In fact, since the modern Budget process was established by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, Congress has managed to pass all of the appropriations bills on time (before October 1st) on only four occasions: fiscal years 1977, 1989, 1995 and 1997. This means that all the other fiscal years up to 2019 started without the year’s budget plan in place. Without a proper budget, the government can’t appropriate funds to its programs, causing a shutdown. This situation has occurred 21 times, from the first one in 1976, which lasted 10 days, to the most recent which started December 22nd, 2018 and ended January 25th, 2019 for a record total of 34 days. Obviously, since the budget process is very rarely completed on schedule, having the government shutdown almost every year poses a serious problem, and the solution that has been used to address this problem is the continuing resolution or CR. A continuing resolution temporarily extends funding for government agencies in the absence of an approved budget, typically at the funding levels of the previous budget. If the continuing resolution fails to pass Congress or is not signed by the President, then all executive agencies which have not received funding through the appropriations process must shut down operations. To summarize, the budget process is a very long and complicated one, and it forces a shutdown if not passed on time in the absence of a CR.

Gridlock: when compromise is out of the question

So far I’ve explained the budget process behind the shutdown, but though the budget definitely is involved in the most recent shutdown, it is but part of the picture. For the budget process to fail, it often requires conflict. Where compromise thrives between parties of Congress and between Congress and the President, the budget process can be completed on time in most cases. Additionally, similarities in views, beliefs, and affiliation are also necessary for cooperation between components of government. However, as you can no doubt surmise from the most recent shutdown, cooperation and compromise were not present in the debate around fiscal year 2019’s budget. In fiscal years 2017 and 2018, Trump proposed budgets with no significant funding for his border wall, which were passed by the Republican-controlled Congress. By early December 2018, discussions on border security were going on as usual until Trump held a meeting in the White House with Democratic congressional leaders on December 11, 2018. In this meeting, he threatened a government shutdown if Congress didn’t fund his wall. By December 19, Congress produced a revised budget with $1.5 billion for border security but without funding for the wall, and an informal understanding between the White House and Congress led the Senate to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded according to these terms. However, with the anticipation of House control passing to the Democrats, hard-liners from Trump’s base pressured him to reject the proposal. Thus, to the astonishment of Congress, he rejected the proposition and declared that he wouldn’t sign any proposal that didn’t include $5.7 billion for the wall. The Republican-controlled House attempted to pass a CR with $5 billion for the wall on December 21, but Senate couldn’t reach an agreement on it. Consequently, the government descended into shutdown, as December 21 was the end date of the last CR. In short, Trump laid plans for his wall on the congressional table and threatened a shutdown if Congress refused to fund it, and did just that (shutdown the government) when Congress failed to provide the necessary legislation. Considering the U.S. political system where there are only two political parties with opposite views, compromise is often very difficult, and there is little middle ground because there is only the republican and the democratic view with no in-between. In the presence of a lack of cooperation between the parties, the political process is slowed down considerably or it simply breaks down. In such situations, it is arduous to pass legislation through Congress which are vital in governing the nation, and the President is more likely to veto legislation if his affiliation differs from that of Congress. For instance, legislation from a Democratic Congress often does not correspond with the views of a Republican president, and he will be inclined to veto it. This will only get worse if both parties are unwilling to cooperate: the President will often stand behind his party’s position and apply the veto indiscriminately. This problem where the government process is hindered by the inability of its parties to work together is called gridlock.

There you have it, the longest government shutdown in U.S. History was a result of two main factors: a laborious appropriations process for executive agencies and friction caused by the two-party system with parties of opposite views. Together, these factors are responsible for the all too common delays in the budget process. It is harder to pass the appropriations bills for the budget and since the process to write up these bills is quite complicated already, the budget is not approved in time for the beginning of the fiscal year. Further dissent and lack of cooperation between the parties subsequently makes it harder to pass continuing resolutions to keep the government funded, and in the absence of CRs, the government falls in shutdown.

Sources

"Budget Process." National Priorities Project. Accessed February 28, 2019. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/federal-budget-process/.

"Policy Basics: Introduction to the Federal Budget Process." Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. November 08, 2018. Accessed February 28, 2019. https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-introduction-to-the-federal-budget-process.

Murse, Tom. "Here Are All 21 Government Shutdowns in U.S. History Since 1976." Thoughtco. February 15, 2019. Accessed February 28, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/government-shutdown-history-3368274.

DeSilver, Drew. "Congress Has Long Struggled to Pass Spending Bills on Time." Pew Research Center. January 16, 2018. Accessed February 28, 2019. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/16/congress-has-long-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/.

Kimberly@worldmoneywatch.com. "Why the Government Shut Down and What Happens Next." The Balance Small Business. February 26, 2019. Accessed February 28, 2019. https://www.thebalance.com/government-shutdown-3305683.

Bryan, B. (2019, January 21). "The government shutdown is now the longest on record and the fight between Trump and Democrats is only getting uglier. Here's everything you missed." Retrieved February 7, 2019, from https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/government-shutdown-timeline-deadline-trump-democrats-2019-1

Denning, S. (2019, January 13). "America's Longest Government Shutdown: How We Got Here." Retrieved February 21, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2019/01/13/americas-longest-government-shutdown-how-we-got-here/#3047e3a952b6

Haughey, J. (2018, February 27). "14 Steps to the Federal Budget Process Timeline | Connectivity." Retrieved March 11, 2019, from https://info.cq.com/resources/14-steps-federal-budget-process-timeline/