Inside D.C.

The appropriations process is broken

The congressional appropriations process has always been a classic political tug-of-war.  Back in the day of freewheeling spending, the most coveted and powerful seats in either the House or the Senate were on the Appropriations Committees because you were in the small gang who controlled the money and who got how much.

Political careers were made and power amassed based “earmarking” spending for your state. This was the political art of tagging millions of dollars in federal tax dollars to home state or home district projects.  Two of the masters were the late Sens. Robert Byrd (D, WV) and Ted Stevens (D, AK), but Republicans were just as talented when they controlled either or both chambers.

Routinely, all 12 appropriations bills were completed by the September 30 deadline – the end of the federal fiscal year – and only rarely did Congress resort to the dreaded “omnibus” spending package where all of the bills were rolled together into a single bill in order to keep the federal government’s doors open.  It was a cardinal procedural sin to try and attach legislative language to any appropriations bill.

But earmarks are gone and Congress has not approved all 12 individual spending bills by the September 30 deadline since 1996.

The appropriations process is now so broken it may not be fixable.  The GOP-controlled Congress, faced with a highly partisan president, is using appropriations bills to move pure legislative policy priorities, most of which have nothing to do with the spending bill to which they’re attached and many are designed simply to embarrass or cause political harm to the other party.  Most of these items begin with the words, “No money shall be spent…” The simplistic logic is the president won’t veto an entire department or agency budget just to kill a couple of bad policy riders.

However, this week, House leadership once again demonstrated it can be its own worst enemy.

The FY2016 Interior-Environment spending bill sucked up 20 hours of floor debate and was quickly moving to a final vote.  Already controversial because the bill is chock-a-block with policy riders to undo administration rulemakings on everything from sage grouse and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to blocking EPA’s “waters of the U.S. (WOTUS)” rulemaking, while undoing ozone and greenhouse gas recapture rules, a pure policy amendment to prohibit “draping” the Confederate flag in federal cemeteries was accepted on voice vote.  Hours later, as the bloated legislation lumbered to the finish line, Rep. Ken Calvert (R, CA) tried to undo the flag amendment with another amendment, and so badly handled it in the face of Democrat outrage that House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) yanked the bill off the floor.  Fingers were pointed, blame was assigned, and Boehner told reporters the bill will remain “in abeyance” until the “adult” members of Congress figure out the Confederate flag flap.

Just 24 hours later, the chair of the Appropriations Committees financial services subcommittee was informed by House leadership that the FY2016 financial services spending bill will not go to the House floor next week as scheduled due to “extreme forces” at work.  It’s now very likely that given these two process debacles, the House is done with floor debate on spending, at least for the foreseeable future.

In the Senate, the appropriations process has ground to a halt.  While the committee continues to do its work, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) put the first brick in the process wall when he announced he’d block every spending bill on the floor until the Republicans agreed to negotiate Reid’s version of a budget deal, one that kills off so-called “sequestration” spending caps.  President Obama cemented in a few more bricks in the wall when he started sending up notices he’d veto spending bills based on sequestration.  Now the rank-and-file Senate Democrats are using sequestration as a battle cry.

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to do with away with individual spending bills in favor a single federal government “omnibus” spending bill.  Perhaps the temptation of messing with any of 12 different bills in order to move a parochial political agenda is too great, and maybe that temptation can’t be overcome.  Maybe the only way to save necessary spending is to swaddle it within a wrapping of other department and agency priorities and programs.

It almost makes you yearn for the “good old day.”  Then again, maybe not.