The Silent Failure of Appropriations

David Super

      Four issues have dominated Congress’s fiscal agenda this fall.  The (minimally) bipartisan infrastructure bill became law on November 15.  The Build Back Better environmental and human services bill is still subject to intense wrangling.  Appropriations for the fiscal year than began on October 1 remain in limbo.  And Congress has just agreed to a complex procedure for raising the debt limit to prevent a default.  The procedural and political context of each of these is complex.  This post seeks to cut through some of the resulting confusion concerning appropriations.  Separate posts will address the debt limit and Build Back Better. 

     Appropriations is one of the last vestiges of bipartisanship in federal politics.  Appropriations for most programs could not, without a radical restructuring of the government, be included in budget reconciliation bills or other vehicles exempt from the filibuster.  As a result, appropriations bills require the assent of both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, regardless of which party controls the House or the presidency.  (Some may be tempted to see this story as yet another reason to undo the filibuster; they should consider that doing so would allow zeroing-out countless programs vital to a progressive vision for the country next time Republicans have unified control of the federal government.  Many of these programs were eliminated or drastically cut in the proposed budgets of Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.) 

     Ordinarily, the appropriations process begins with a decision on the overall level that Congress will permit for the upcoming fiscal year.  This can be done many ways:  multi-year legislation setting caps, single-year legislation setting or amending caps, a concurrent budget resolution, or “deeming resolutions” that each chamber passes when no budget resolution will be adopted.  A budget resolution must be bicameral but need not be bipartisan; the other methods all require bipartisanship, at least in the Senate. 

     The next step is to divide the overall level among the twelve matching appropriations subcommittees in each chamber so that they may begin drafting bills.  These “302(b) allocations” can, in theory, be made by the chairs of the full appropriations committees and their subcommittees in the respective chambers.  These allocations accomplish little, however, if they are so unacceptable to the Senate minority that any appropriations bills reflecting them will be filibustered in the Senate.  Some substantial consultation therefore typically occurs. 

     Once the appropriations committees settle on their 302(b) allocations – which may or may not be the same in the House and the Senate – the subcommittees set about making funding choices for particular programs within their allocations and writing their respective bills.  Here again, this process could be completely partisan but typically is not because of the need for minority support in the Senate (and often the desire for mutual back-scratching in the House). 

     This year, because the appropriations caps President Obama agreed to in 2011 have finally expired, Congress could and did set ceilings for appropriations through a budget resolution.  No Republicans voted for the budget resolution, although their main grievance was its facilitation of Build Back Better rather than appropriations levels. 

     Since passing the budget resolution, Democrats sought to engage Republicans in negotiations over 302(b) allocations.  When Republicans were reluctant to talk substantively, Democrats established their own 302(b) allocations and began crafting twelve appropriations bills reflecting their and the President’s priorities.  They have continued to try to negotiate 302(b) allocations with Republicans but found their counterparts have little interest in doing so.    

     After a decade of austerity resulting from the 2011 budget agreement – austerity that was not observed in the 2017 upper-income tax cut legislation – numerous programs are falling well short of what they need to accomplish their purposes.  Accordingly, the President’s budget proposed a 15.5% increase in non-defense discretionary programs’ spending.  Although these increases have received far less attention than the Build Back Better reconciliation bill, when projected over a ten-year period they are equal to roughly half of what Build Back Better is likely to provide.  Their emphasis on human services and the environment echo that of Build Back Better.

     With Republicans unwilling to allow any appropriations bills on the Senate floor or to engage in substantive negotiations on appropriates going forward, Democrats had little choice but to propose a “continuing resolution” (CR) that keeps the federal government going at the previous year’s levels (generally without adjustment for inflation or for changes in demographics or need).  The previous year’s levels, of course, were negotiated with the Trump Administration and reflect both much lower levels and very different priorities than those reflected in the Democrats’ proposed appropriations bills. 

     CRs are not unusual – Congress almost never finishes all appropriations bills by the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1 – but this one showed every sign of having a very different political significance.  Although Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made general statements about seeking “parity” for defense spending with the increases on the domestic side – likely boosting the former by trimming the latter – Republicans reportedly have been making little effort to specify what sort of shifts they desire. 

     Observers increasingly believe that the Republican strategy is to block all appropriations bills for the current fiscal year and force Democrats to accept a full-year CR freezing appropriations at last year’s levels (excluding the emergency appropriations passed in response to the pandemic).  And if Republicans will not agree to regular appropriations bills this year, they surely will not do so next year, either, as they are seeking to retake Congress from the Democrats.  The result would be a two-year freeze of appropriations at the levels President Trump signed into law last year.  Not only would all the Democrats’ investments in social, environmental, and other programs be thwarted, but programs’ purchasing power will continue to deteriorate without inflation adjustments.  Because many programs have some costs outside of their control, this means that truly discretionary functions will bear even heavier reductions. 

     In one final effort to rescue the year’s appropriations process, Democrats passed another CR extending government funding through February 18.  Although some Republican firebrands sought to defeat this CR and shut down the government to gain leverage against the Administration’s pandemic policies, Senator McConnell secured sufficient votes from his senators to allow it to pass.  A long-time appropriator himself, Senator McConnell appears to have concluded that he would prefer the Trump levels to any deal his party could possibly reach with the Democrats.  Moreover, he has recognized that criticism of Republicans in the past has so heavily focused on their forcing partial government shutdowns that as long as they allow CRs to pass, they will face no political consequences for this obstruction. 

     If Republicans continue to stonewall, the most Democrat can hope to accomplish is persuading them to accept a modest number of “anomalies” – changes from the prior year’s levels to reflect one-time changes in circumstances.  (For example, when Congress was passing CRs near the end of the last decade, it accepted some anomalous appropriations increases to fund the decennial census.)  How many of these Republicans will accept, and what anomalies they will claim exist in their favored programs, remains to be seen. 

     By all appearances, however, a large part of the Biden agenda is slipping beneath the waves with almost nobody noticing. 

     @DavidASuper1