A popular blogger called Taylor Cone gave some great advice for budding inventors, discussing the process of prototyping: build it, then break it, then fix it. That’s a strategy Congress ought to try.
The House Appropriations Committee, Congress’s most powerful panel, has 63 members, only 8 of whom have ever voted to do what the law requires of them, namely, to pass 12 appropriation bills to fund government agencies and programs. In fact, Congress has passed the required bills on time only 4 times in the last 40 years, the last time 26 years ago. Only 25 of the 435 House members and 8 of the 100 Senators were even in Congress then, all of them in their 70s, 80s, and 90s now. They may not even remember how it was supposed to work.
The budget process was outlined in 1974, even before the dean of the Congress, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (age 91) was there. That legislation established a simple process. The President submits a budget request in January, both House’s budget committees make whatever changes they want and pass budget resolutions in April, a joint conference committee irons out any differences, and both Houses pass final versions, establishing revenue and spending targets for the next year. Other committees must honor those targets in passing the 12 appropriation bills, and any bills that authorize new spending or revenue.
In practice, that has never worked because there is no penalty for Congress ignoring the budget. So, why bother passing a budget at all? Or appropriation bills that stay within the budget? Instead, spending bills became Christmas trees, on which members could hang any pet projects, without regard to budget limits. The eventual result was the inability for Congress to agree on the Christmas tree, so that over time, it has simply quit passing appropriation bills, too.
No more than five of the required 12 spending bills have been passed in any of the last 26 years, not a single one in the last six. Instead, they lump everything into a single “continuing resolution” at the end of each cycle – continuing all programs at the existing level until a specific expiration date. That just kicks the can down the road – putting off tough decisions to some other time – which never comes.
This “continuing resolution” process has been criticized for 40 years, because it results in massive bills too big for anyone to read, and circumvents budgetary discipline. But the current controversy over “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) recommendations highlights an even worse consequence of Congress’s irresponsibility. That is, continuing resolutions allow autopilot funding of illegal programs.
For example, Congress established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in 2010 in response to a financial crisis, specifying that it would be funded by Federal Reserve profits. But there are no Federal Reserve profits today. The Fed lost $114 billion in 2023, and $150 billion in 2024. Thus, there is no funding for CFPB, but it continues anyway, because Congress’s continuing resolutions fund everything unchanged.
Another example: President Kennedy created the Agency for International Development by executive order in 1961, and Congress made it statutory in 1998, to “provide assistance to strategically important countries, lead U.S. efforts to alleviate poverty, disease, and humanitarian need, and… supporting developing countries’ economic growth.” The social engineering we now know USAID has been funding around the world (including in many countries not “strategically important” to the U.S. and some that are outright enemies) was never authorized by Congress. But over a period of decades, the agency evolved into a massive slush fund that can be used for any political agenda, while Congress funds it automatically, unaware and unconcerned about where the money is going.
Perhaps worse, there are hundreds of federal programs that have legally expired, often years or even decades ago, that continue to operate as if nothing happened, because of the mindless robotic congressional funding through continuing resolutions.
Here is the simple solution – break the process completely. Separate the arbitrary 12 annual spending bills into a couple hundred, one for each agency or program.
If Congress could not agree to continue any particular program, it would lapse – but without shutting anything else down. And if the President wanted to veto a particular bill over some policy dispute, he would not be shutting down the entire government, just one program.
No more Christmas trees, and more importantly, no more hidden money autopiloting itself around the world unnoticed. Congress would have fixed the process, by first breaking it.
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