Good News: Congress Likely to Blow Budget Deadline, Will Spend Less as a Result

Amid the righteous furor over the just-released
Senate torture report, there’s another congressional drama
unfolding. This one’s about the federal budget or lack thereof.

Reports the Wash Post:

Plans to quickly approve a $1.1 trillion spending package
to keep most of the federal government open through the end of the
fiscal year fell apart late Monday, increasing the chance lawmakers
will miss a Thursday deadline.

That spending package is also called the CROmnibus, since it’s
part continuing resolution (CR) and part omnibus spending bills;
the bill has to be ready two days ahead of a vote. The CR part,
which would not change funding levels, is aimed at President
Obama’s immigration executive order. The GOP-controlled House (and
come January, Senate too) doesn’t want to fund the president’s
“amnesty” plan for some illegal immigrants. The rest of the
CROmnibus, though, would actually increase spending above the
sequester caps that were passed oh-so-many-years ago. That part of
increased spending is something the newly elected Republican
majority can get behind:

The legislation would provide full funding for 11 of the 12
appropriations bills Congress is supposed to pass each year, but it
would extend funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which
has jurisdiction over immigration enforcement, only through early
next year. The shorter deadline for DHS would allow Republicans to
craft a legislative response to Obama’s immigration
orders next year instead of now.

Over at Roll Call, it appears that this sort of last-minute
legislating has confused event top men. There have been something
like 90 add-ons in the mad rush to start spending more money than
we have. Consider Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who is the Democrat’s
number two person in the House:

It’s still not clear, even at
his leadership level, what outstanding items were keeping
appropriators from moving forward in the process, Hoyer insisted.
He mentioned that among the “90-plus” policy riders being debated,
a ”a large number” of issues had been resolved.

He insisted he didn’t know which riders were still the subject
of disagreement at the negotiating table, or whether part of the
hold-up had to do with a stalemate over the Terrorism Risk
Insurance Act, which has now reportedly come down to whether House
Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, can compel
Senate Democrats to make some concessions to the 2010 financial
regulatory bill known as Dodd-Frank, much maligned by the GOP.

More
here.

Both sides are terrified of a government shutdown, even for a
coffee break. Because god knows all the horrors that visited the
country like a plague
the last time anything remotely close to that happened, right?
So they will do short-term CRs for a few days at a time until they
can figure out what petty differences are separating them.

That’s too bad. If the new GOP majority was actually interested
in cutting spending—Republicans always seem to be, right up to the
moment they take office and realize they are now in charge of the
cash register—they’d push for a CR through the end of this fiscal
year and get a jump on a budget that actually reduces spending year
over year in a smart way and start selling that plan to the
American people.
Who say they are ready and waiting for just such a budget.