How to Bungle a Budget

David Super

      Congress yesterday enacted a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the federal government through the six-plus months remaining in this fiscal year.  The measure cleared the House 217-213, essentially on party lines (with one Member on each side voting against their parties).  It passed the Senate 54-46, with two senators that caucus with Democrats voting “yes” and one Republican voting “no”.  To reach the Senate floor, however, it needed eight Democratic votes on a procedural motion and received ten. 

     Crucial was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s announcement that he would support the procedural motion.  House Democrats and progressive activists have fiercely condemned him since then.  This post analyzes the Democrats’ actions relating to the CR.  It finds that Senator Schumer made the correct move at the end in allowing the CR to pass but that he and other congressional Democrats badly mishandled the process leading up to that point.  The criticism of him is misinformed, but leadership’s ill-considered rhetoric contributed to that misinformation. 

     A bit of background is in order.  Last Spring, Congress and President Biden reached bipartisan agreements on all twelve appropriations bills necessary to fund the federal government for the fiscal year ending September 2024.  These bills included the substantial cuts required by the agreement President Biden negotiated with former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in exchange for raising the debt limit.  They did not, however, include the further reductions in domestic discretionary spending that House Republicans had sought. 

     Like other modern appropriations acts, these bills were accompanied by joint explanatory statements providing considerably more detail on how funds were to be allocated beyond that in the statutory language.  Administrations have consistently treated these joint explanatory statements as binding to avoid appropriators’ bipartisan wrath.  This tradition has caused appropriators to become almost indifferent as to which directives go into the bills and which go into the joint explanatory statements. 

     With partisanship at its zenith a few weeks before the November election, Congress was in no position to agree on new appropriations bills last September.  It therefore passed a short-term CR, essentially allowing agencies to continue spending at the 2024 rate for October, November, and part of December.  When this short-term CR expired, Republicans wanted to give the incoming Trump Administration a say in crafting year-long appropriations bills.  Accordingly, they insisted on another short-term CR, to last through March 14.  Republican negotiators then began discussions with their Democratic counterparts on crafting year-long bills. 

     About two weeks ago, Republicans walked away from the table and indicated that they would move to pass a CR to continue spending at the 2024 levels for the remainder of the year.  Because of inflation, this represents a significant real cut:  agencies must eliminate some activities to free up funds to pay higher prices for others.  Republicans declined to work with Democrats on writing this CR but promised it would be “clean”, i.e., devoid of substantive policy changes.  Both parties agreed that some “anomalies” would need to be addressed:  positive or negative changes in the cost of government activities under current policies.  (For example, when appropriators write CRs near the end of a decade, they must include “anomaly” funding for the decennial census.) 

     As the March 14 deadline approached and Republicans still would not release their proposed CR, Democrats and independent budget experts began to wonder why it was taking so long if the CR really was “clean”.  Some Republicans fanned these fears by urging their party’s leaders to incorporate the cuts Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was making in a plethora of programs. 

     Democratic appropriators, completely frozen out of the process, concluded reasonably that the only way they could influence these budgetary decisions would be to defeat the CR that the Republicans were drafting and force a resumption of bipartisan negotiations.  They hoped that, once they got Republican appropriators alone in a room, they could work out some additional specificity on how appropriated funds should be spent, perhaps by moving some of the detail that previously had been in joint explanatory statements into legislative language.  With Republicans only able to suffer one or two defections if House Democrats held together – and numerous Freedom Caucus Members on record with “principled” objections to CRs -- defeating the CR seemed potentially withing reach. 

     So far, so good.  Unfortunately, attacking a CR one has not seen is not easy.  Some Democrats decided to attack the entire concept of a CR.  They said that the CR must be defeated because it would give President Trump and Mr. Musk more flexibility to slash the government.  This line was picked up by rank-and-file Members and by activists. 

     Left unaddressed, however, was the comparator they had in mind when speaking of “more flexibility”.  A year-long CR likely would give the Administration more flexibility than the year-long appropriations bills Democratic appropriators hoped to negotiate.  A year-long CR would not, however, give the Administration more flexibility than the existing part-year CR did.  And nothing inherent in a clean CR would give the Administration more flexibility than the bipartisan appropriations bills from 2024.  Finally, with the Republicans exerting remarkably tight party discipline, it is far from clear that any actual full-year appropriations bills Republicans would actually have accepted would have imposed further limitations. 

     When the Republicans finally released their CR proposal last weekend, it was not “clean”.  Under the guise of adjusting for anomalies, they shifted a not-insignificant amount of funds from human services to the Administration’s priorities.  Structurally, however, the CR provides that “[e]xcept as otherwise expressly provided in this division, the requirements, authorities, conditions, limitations, and other provisions of the appropriations Acts [from 2024] shall continue in effect”. 

     Having demonized the very concept of a CR, congressional Democrats and activists proved unable to recalibrate their message to target the real but more subtle shortcomings of the Republicans’ proposal.  They did such an effective job of promoting the CR-as-slush-fund message that reporters simply would not believe that that message did not match the actual legislation.  This unified, if misleading, message kept House Democrats together, but when House Republicans, too, stayed uncharacteristically unified, Senate Democrats were in a bind. 

     Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated the folly of causing a partial government shutdown without a clear, coherent plan.  Had Senate Democrats defeated the CR, they surely would have demonstrated the same thing again.  This is what Senator Schumer tried to communicate, but his remarks were less than crystalline.  And too much of the party was too invested in over-the-top criticisms of the CR to hear him. 

     A partial government shutdown is particularly ill-suited as a response to the current crisis.  A partial government shutdown prevents spending – which is precisely the opposite of what Democrats are trying to accomplish.  Past government shutdowns ended because both parties had programs to which they were devoted.  For example, Republicans did not want to be blamed for interrupting funds for disease research.  Today, the National Institutes of Health are a major focus of the Administration’s attacks.  Indeed, it is difficult to identify any programs that Republicans care about enough to gain concessions.  (The only plausible candidate would be immigration enforcement, but Democrats are badly splintered on all things relating to immigration and so are ill-positioned to hold enforcement funds hostage to force a deal.)

     President Trump would have had some ability to shield his preferred activities from a partial government shutdown by manipulating what he declared to be an essential government function.  Republicans also could have brought up bills restoring funding only to some parts of the government – such as restoring pay for armed servicemembers or federal law enforcement officers – and dared Democrats to vote against them.  Activists might wish congressional Democrats would shrug off voters’ anger over “abandoning our men and women in uniform”, but that is not realistic.  Thus, had Democrats killed the CR, Republicans might not have simply left crucial programs unfunded for several weeks or even months and denied Democrats another chance to vote to fund those programs at any level.    

     Democrats triggering a partial government shutdown by withholding their votes also would have confused the picture for low-information voters about who is responsible for the deteriorations in public services that are resulting from DOGE’s chaotic cuts and mass layoffs.  To the extent the President’s polling numbers have eroded modestly, it appears attributable to this chaos and fears about public services; Democrats would have been foolish to confuse that story. 

     This episode offers at least two lessons.  First, as difficult as it may be to formulate and communicate effective messages with Republicans constantly serving up surprises, progressives are unwise to succumb to the temptation to characterize technical legislation in ways likely to cause misunderstandings by journalists and grassroots activists.  Today’s bitter recriminations result from allowing the desire to win the next vote to overcome the long perspective.  More importantly, candor ought to be progressives’ trademark. 

     And second, progressives will accomplish little until they leave their comfort zone of fighting intramural battles.  Members, and leadership, feel such relentless pressure to “do something, anything” that they keep floating short-sighted, counter-productive initiatives. 

     The country is in this position because too many voters rejected progressives and wanted to give President Trump another chance to lead.  Very little will change until a significant number of those voters’ views change.  That will happen when they understand the destructive and gratuitously cruel actions the Administration is taking in their names.  Anyone troubled by the Administration’s actions – from top congressional leaders to grassroots activists and across the political spectrum – needs to shine a light on what the Administration is doing.  Persuasion is the only kind of “fighting” that will make a difference.  Performative acts of defiance may hearten activists but they are unlikely to persuade the voters whose views matter – and could push those voters in the other direction.  The vulnerable people suffering from the Administration’s callous and reckless actions cannot afford the self-indulgence of reflexive combativeness lacking a plausible path forward. 

     @DavidASuper1  @DavidASuper.bsky.social