The Aw-Shucks-No-Sweat-Just-Hangin’-Around Appropriations Bill of 2022

David Super

     Some years ago, Members of Congress sought to outdo one another in the application of adjectives to supplemental appropriations bills.  If we say a bill is a “dire emergency supplemental appropriation”, the reasoning must have gone, maybe nobody will look too closely at all the rather mundane activities it is funding. 

     The feeling about appropriations this year could hardly be more different.  The beginning of the fiscal year arrived on October 1 without enactment of a single one of the twelve regular appropriations bills that, between them, fund the federal government.  Since then, Congress has enacted a series of stopgap continuing resolutions to keep the government going, and it likely will enact another this week or early next to avert a partial government shutdown on February 18. 

     The reason for the absence of appropriations bills is not sloth or a failure to appreciate the importance of letting federal agencies their budgets so they can plan and go through contracting procedures.  Instead, the absence of appropriations bills is a forceful application of the principle that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”  The two parties likely would have little trouble reaching common ground on several of the individual bills, but in order to do so they would have to reach agreement on the top-line dollar figure to be made available for each of the twelve appropriations bills.  That would allow each of the twelve appropriations committees to know how much money they could distribute and negotiate funding levels for particular programs.  But the parties are in sharp disagreement about what those top-line figures should be.  

     President Biden’s budget proposal and the House’s appropriations bills make large investments in social and environmental programs in large part to offset the damage those programs suffered from a decade of sequestration and tight appropriations caps.  Senate Republicans, however, insist on parity between domestic and defense spending, meaning that if domestic programs get large increases, so does the Pentagon.  The prior decade of austerity affected the Defense Department much less seriously than it did domestic programs, in part for technical reasons and in part because the Pentagon proved adept at smuggling funding for its regular operations into “emergency” supplemental appropriations for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

     Democrats therefore face an unappealing choice:  force-feed the Pentagon far more money than it needs or can efficiently use, or have Republicans block any regular appropriations bills for the current fiscal year.  This would result in a year-long “continuing resolution” freezing all programs at the levels Congress negotiated last year with former President Trump.  Congress could add extra funding to address “anomalies” in a few programs, but Republicans presumably would demand Defense anomalies comparable to the domestic ones.  It also would all but guarantee a year-long continuing resolution next year, as well. 

     By all indications, the congressional Democratic leadership is trying to reach agreement with Republicans that would allow full appropriations bills to move forward.  This means, at a minimum, defense spending at the levels contained in the bipartisan Defense Authorization Act, whose excesses have faced withering criticism from both left and right. 

     The process of reaching agreement to write full appropriations bills has been further complicated by the large number of substantive policy issues governed by appropriations riders.  A year-long continuing resolution traditionally continues all prior riders.  Democrats desire to eliminate some of last year’s riders while adding or strengthening others.  At this point, however, unless they can work out a swap with Republicans, appropriations bills are likely to leave the rider-verse largely undisturbed. 

Would Eliminating the Legislative Filibuster Help?

     Because opposition to the filibuster so dominates progressive discourse on federal policy these days, it may be useful to work out how all of this would go were there no legislative filibuster.  Superficially, this laborious process is necessary only because Democrats require sixty votes to pass appropriations bills through the Senate. 

     Yet in a world without the filibuster, the starting point would be much, much worse:  President Trump and the Republican Congress likely would have zeroed out many important social programs in the appropriations bills written during 2017 and 2018; they were unable to do so only because Democratic senators could filibuster any extreme appropriations bills.  Other programs’ funding would have been slashed much more deeply than the Republicans were able to do.  (Those insisting that Democrats might as well eliminate the legislative filibuster because Republicans are certain to do so next time they can should explain why Senator McConnell did not drop the legislative filibuster in 2017-18 when it severely hampered this and many other pieces of the Republican legislative agenda.)

     Gutting or ending these programs would have done considerable damage over the past four years and would have left a much bigger funding hole needing to be filled now.  In addition, where Republicans had dissolved programs, it would require still more money and time to recreate them.  For example, if a community health center had been closed three years ago, it would take considerable time to find and rent space, hire managers and health care professionals, obtain provider agreements with Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurers, publicize the center’s renewed existence, and so forth.  Where states were unwilling to help, federal staff likely would be sufficient to organize only a handful of new health centers per year. 

     And even if the current Congress was willing to invest in building back those programs, the job likely would not be complete before the next Congress – likely with a Republican majority – took office and stopped the rebuilding process in its tracks.  Human services programs, along with the people they serve and those that staff them, are delicate and vulnerable:  easy to harm and slow to heal.  They cannot do well in an environment of wild policy swings, which is what the filibuster’s end would entail. 

     Moreover, even if Senate rules allowed Democrats to legislate with a simple majority, that majority often will not be available.  Obviously they would be unable to pass legislation that divides their ideologically diverse caucus, as seen in the setbacks the Build Back Better human services and environmental bill has suffered.  In addition, their majority depends on the good health of fifty-one people, some of whom are quite old.  When New Mexico Senator Lujan – who is not old at all – suffered a stroke in late January, Democrats lost their Senate majority until his projected return in mid-March.  Build Back Better, contested appropriations votes, and contested confirmations (is there any other kind these days?) are therefore on hold for more than a month.  (When Senator Manchin talks about preserving the civility of the Senate, part of what he means is the tradition of “pairing”:  senators agreeing to withhold their votes to balance those of ailing members of the other party.  That would be quite useful just now.)  With Democrats controlling the House and the White House, Senator McConnell is not expected to attempt any “jail-break” maneuvers with his temporary majority; were a Republican president in office, considerable mischief would be possible.   

     With appropriations as elsewhere, eliminating the filibuster is the political equivalent of krokodil:  a cheap, quick high followed by a staggering amount of long-term damage and pain.  The Democrats’ current bind results from losing too many elections and from failing to develop effective messaging about the need for human services funding that would deter Republican attacks.  No quick fix is available. 

     @DavidASuper1