The Issues, No. 15 - Government Spending Bills

One of my major peeves, when it come to Congress, is that Congress hardly ever passes the government spending bills for the next fiscal year until three or four months, or longer, after the next fiscal year has started. When I recently mentioned this concern to one of my Senators, his response was that establishing the budget for the next fiscal year is a complicated process that requires a lot of time to complete. My reaction to that is that if you have a process that doesn't work, you need to look at the process and fix it so it does work.

Beside the fact that its inability to get the job done on time makes Congress look inept and sets a poor example for the rest of the country, every time the spending bills are not passed before the beginning of the next fiscal year is costly to the government agencies which have to operate on what are called "Continuing Resolutions" which essentially means they can only spend at last year's level until Congress gets around to passing the bills. This usually involves the suspension of "non-essential" activities and as WikipediA says, "With non-essential operations suspended, many agencies are forced to interrupt research projects, training programs, or other important functions. It essentially limits government employees to a six- to ten-month work year, as significant amounts of time are lost to bureaucratic haggling and paperwork".

It seems to me that passing the spending bills is, if not the most important, at least among the most important things that Congress does. It therefore would seem that they ought to do it on time every year. If there is a problem in the system or the procedures they use, they should "fix it" and, if partisan politics and earmarks, or "pork", are causes for the delays (which they probably are to some degree), they need to knock it off. I want my Congress to do what it's supposed to do when it's supposed to do it.