While timeliness has not been a hallmark of appropriations bills in recent years, this year is proving exceptionally slow. According to budget procedures, appropriations bills are supposed to be finished by June 30 to leave plenty of time to reconcile differences between the House and Senate before the new fiscal year, which starts October 1. But this year, not a single appropriations bill has been sent to the president, and neither house has completed action on all 13 appropriations bills.

While timeliness has not been a hallmark of appropriations bills in recent years, this year is proving exceptionally slow. According to budget procedures, appropriations bills are supposed to be finished by June 30 to leave plenty of time to reconcile differences between the House and Senate before the new fiscal year, which starts October 1. But this year, not a single appropriations bill has been sent to the president, and neither house has completed action on all 13 appropriations bills.

To continue to fund government operations, either appropriations or a Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund government must be passed. Otherwise, there is no funding for government, resulting in a government shutdown, a scenario that no one wants since either side could be blamed. What seems to be causing the delay?

• It’s an election year. Given budget deficits ($145 billion in 2003, if tax and spending policies remain unchanged) and the overall congressional disposition for “fiscal responsibility,” there is less money for so-called “pork” projects that many legislators want to see enacted in their home states for reelection campaigning purposes. While these projects constitute a very small amount of the overall spending, they often bring important state benefits, besides being good public relations. Also, because it is an election year and appearances are important, there is more pressure to balance the contradictory positions of being “fiscally responsible” while still funding national priorities like education that are supported by the president. A Democratic analysis shows how much funding for the president’s education initiative would be lacking under the budget resolution cap, including state-by-state figures.
  
  
• The House, which has a budget resolution setting an overall discretionary budget cap of $759 billion, is a House divided, with the more fiscally conservative members resisting any efforts to exceed that level, and others recognizing that it is necessary to exceed the cap to fund the president’s education initiative and other priorities, including the always-troublesome Health and Human Services appropriations bill. Still others are concerned that social spending, especially for low-income and working poor families, will be the target of spending cuts that will be required if the House keeps to its budget resolution limit.
  
  
• The Senate does not have a budget resolution, and is working with a higher spending limit ($768 billion) from the previous year's resolution. But since there is a Constitutional requirement that spending bills be initiated in the House, the Senate is not considering any bills but those passed by the House (and then each bill must go to joint House/Senate conference to iron out the differences). The Senate is frequently in a holding pattern waiting for House-passed appropriations bills to come its way.

So, given the slow pace of appropriations, the first Continuing Resolution (CR) funding the government at current levels through Friday, October 4, 2002, was passed on September 26 by House vote (370-1) with the Senate assenting by voice vote. It is anticipated that a second resolution will be passed after that extending funding through October 11, which is when Congress is expected to recess for elections. After that, the decision has to be made whether it is possible to pass the 13 appropriations bills or whether a long-term continuing resolution that will fund government through the election, and result in a post-election lame duck session of Congress, is a viable alternative. Continuing Resolutions, by the way, are jointly passed by the House and the Senate, signed by the President, and thus become law.

There are some compelling reasons to avoid a long-term CR, since it would require agencies to operate for FY 2003 under their 2002 “current” or “base” rate, without counting one-time only expenses like aid to New York City and the Pentagon (with other one-time only expenses, this comes to a total of $16 billion) or new activities or programs that were planned but for which funding has not yet been appropriated. For obvious reasons, it is likely that the defense and military construction appropriations would be enacted before a long-term CR would be considered.

So what’s the solution? The predicted budget deficits are not huge -- particularly as a percentage of the GDP -- and they should not be used as the reason to cut government spending. We are more concerned about the social deficits that result from continual spending cuts -- we cannot keep on making cuts in domestic programs and services and expect a strong, vital, well-educated and trained, and economically productive nation in the future. It all depends on good education, maintenance of infrastructure, job training, health care, provisions for unemployment, daycare, enough federal and state funding to ensure safe and livable communities -- the list could go on and on.

To keep the budget deficits from being an obstacle to adequately funding government, we think that postponing the Bush tax cuts should be put on the table, and we strongly oppose the continuing efforts to make the tax cuts, which will expire after 2010, permanent. However, legislators need public support to fight for increased spending in these miserly times, so calls and emails from voters that support making domestic priorities the priority are well worth the effort. A new poll done by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Public Opinion Strategies for National Public Radio shows that an increasing number of Americans will be basing their election decisions on attention to domestic issues.