We passed a considerable milestone this month, and we should all be proud of it. We are nearly five months into Fiscal 2024 and have yet to pass all the appropriations bills for the year that is almost halfway done. The current hodgepodge of consolidated funding runs out on Thursday, 01 March. Midnight, we think. Normally that means we are starting to look for buds and blossoms, which are starting to demonstrate Nature’s commitment to the idea of Spring. The current chill represents her commitment to continuing a Spring season- a natural Continuing Resolution, of sorts.
You may have noted how we are lurching through this fiscal year. We have had this budget non-discussion three times so far in 2024. This is a dramatic change from how things worked up until 31 years ago. Those budget times had been “normal” up until the Clinton Administration. for the first couple centuries of our Nation, the Congress was supposed to have passed the twelve appropriations bills that constitute our annual budget the year before it arrived.
It used to be an emotional but approachable process. We are about to hit another crisis.
We were going to do something little bit fun this morning. The intent was to hit the next crisis headed our way. It could arrive as soon as this afternoon, though the Congress still has until Thursday to do something to authorize the cash the Treasury is printing now is actually worth something.
Our Government is the largest human enterprise on our world. That is according to Senator Mark Warner, our Commonwealth’s junior member of the United States Senate. He also delineated the number of employees. He said it this way: “Our nation employed the equivalent of about 4.3 million full-time workers during the 2013 budget year. Of them, about 1.5 million are in the military and another 800,000 are civilian workers at the Department of Defense. No man-made entity is larger than the U.S. government.”
There is some controversy in that, of course, since there are larger nations with around a billion and a half citizens. Like China and India. You would think that with around five times the number of citizens as the United States (at least we think they are citizens) their governments would be larger.
Let’s just agree that it is a large and complicated enterprise whose complexity has outstripped our traditional means of paying for it. The matter began in earnest back in the Clinton Administration with a piece of legislation allegedly aimed at reducing the annual deficit.
If we recall that the actual purpose of our laws is no longer to do what they claim in their titles, it makes a lot of sense with the current total of debt ringing in at $34 Trillion dollars. That is something like nine or ten times the total annual budget for Defense, Services like Social Security and Medicare and all the rest of it.
The number is so vast that there is a reasonable expectation that it will never be repaid without some budgetary trainwreck. Like devaluing our currency and disrupting the lives of millions. We bring this matter up with the understanding- hope- that we will be deceased before the train comes off the tracks. Our kids may suffer from it. Our grandchildren certainly will.
You recall how it used to work. Our fiscal year runs from October first through September 30th of the next year. There are twelve appropriations bills, each with a separate budget subcommittee to debate, amend and discuss each one. That ensures our spending best meets our needs and is arrived at through a transparent legislative process.
That is why we quit doing it. We recognize there was a problem that was clear enough to actually take action on a clear problem a generation ago. Since the name of the Deficit Reduction Act actually produced the opposite practice, it might be worth looking at how we do our budgets these days.
The old way was something called “Regular Order.” There was a crisis in 1993 that made it impossible to complete the debates and amendments on that year’s budget. Our Congress is a clever group, and what happened was the adoption of a Continuing Resolution as the means of doing the annual spending. A “CR” means nothing has to be talked about. No one is responsible, except us, of course.
It seems to go along other initiatives to outsource things like “manufacturing.” You would think that doing something similar to modifying the entire Federal Budget process might have been worth some discussion, but that is part of how we do things these days.
Since 1993, there have only been a handful of “regular order” budgets. The rest went generally like 2024 has (so far). We are on our third “Continuing Resolution” budget for the year that is half gone. We may soon find ourselves debating whether to authorize last year’s spending.
The 2024 CR expires on Thursday. Midnight, we understand. You would think that the most significant legislation of the year would be worth at least modest conversation. Instead, we will see a jumble of disconnected provisions jumbled into one enormous bill. The individual provisions in the legislation may or may not have been discussed by anyone except the donors that have contributed to the Members who support them.
It now has little to do with what is right for America. The last 31 years have changed how work is done in Washington, and it is increasingly impenetrable to scrutiny in concept and execution.
If you have time, you may want to take a look at what our Congress does in the next two days. If we actually knew what they are going to do it might help understand where it is that our Representatives want us to go. It would be fun to chat about, you know?
We are going to have to live with it. Or, better said, this will be a Continuing Crisis that the Grandkids will.
Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com