Earlier today I heard a pundit refer to the "shutdown of the whole government”. With that statement it would be easy to assume we are talking about 100% of government funding. It can all get very confusing when most on cable news don’t fully know or understand what they are talking about. So I’m going to state it all in simple terms.
Let’s suppose you had neighbors that only cut 1/4 of their yard. Meanwhile, they let the other 3/4 of the yard grow and grow, making your whole neighborhood look like an unkept disaster. That’s basically what Congress has been doing for decades now — making an annual fuss over how high to cut the grass in 1/4 of the yard while ignoring the other 3/4 of the yard. In this particular case, as you will see in the graph below, we are at loggerheads over roughly $120 billion out of approximately $5.8 trillion being spent.
IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND MORE….
In budget terms, the roughly 1/4 of the yard is known as Discretionary Spending; the other 3/4 is known as Mandatory Spending, also often referred to as Entitlement Spending. It is Mandatory Spending that drives the debt — not Discretionary Spending. That’s not to say there isn't plenty of waste in the discretionary portion. But, it is to say that even if you cut every penny of Non-Defense Discretionary Spending you don’t make a dent in the debt — not even close.
Discretionary Spending includes two basic categories of funding: Defense and Non-Defense items. The Non-Defense items include NIH funding for cancer research, funding for the Dept of Education, Dept of Energy, USDA, administration of the Social Security program, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Farm Service Agency offices, the State Department (passports), and the salaries and expenses associated with almost every government agency. These are just a few items that come to mind among hundreds of other examples.
The federal government fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30. Given this, every year in September, Congress faces the same dilemma: pass all twelve of the Appropriations bills in the House & Senate or allow the portions of government that are funded by these twelve bills to shut down. Every year, including under President Trump, Congress has passed one or more Continuing Resolutions (CRs) funding the government at the previous year’s level until the twelve annual appropriations bills were complete and signed into law. Many times these twelve bills would be rolled into one big appropriations package at the end of the year and referred to as the Omnibus Appropriations Bill.
Important points to keep in mind: More than half of Discretionary funding is for the military, border patrol, Homeland Security, and some veterans’ benefits. (Other veterans’ benefits are in the Mandatory Spending column.)
The great myth I aways hear pundits say….the House has the "power of the purse”. The Constitution mentions that nowhere. Instead, it states that all bills dealing with revenues must “originate" in the House and the Senate may propose or concur with amendments just as it does with other bills. It does not say that the House has total authority over spending bills. Put another way, any Discretionary appropriations package that is reported out of the House must also be passed by the Senate and signed by the President before it can become law.
In April, with my support, House Republicans passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act that would have raised the debt ceiling and set a discretionary spending limit of $1.47 trillion. House Republicans were united behind this bill. President Biden and Senate Democrats refused to consider that level of cut.
However, this set the stage for a new debt ceiling agreement, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which Congress passed and President Biden signed into law. The Fiscal Responsibility Act set a discretionary spending limit of $1.59 trillion and prevented a debt limit default.
House Republicans would be smart to follow Congressman Jim Jordan’s advice. Pass a Continuing Resolution with policy riders that defund the processing of migrants at the border and that requires real border security.
Make Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explain to the American people that he would rather shut down the government than shut down the border.
Now that would be a winner that might just result in forcing President Biden’s hand to do something.
Fighting over funding levels previously negotiated (or: 2% of funding), that will never pass in a Democrat Senate, will not.
