Congress returns to yet another spending crisis, fears of government shutdown

Paul Singer | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Can Obama and Congress agree on a budget? Sept. 8 -- Bloomberg's Toluse Olorinnipa discusses Washington's looming budget deadline. He speaks on "Bloomberg Surveillance."

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress return from summer recess facing a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the federal government, a deadline they are certain to miss, as they have each of the past 18 years. The question is: Will the government shut down Oct. 1, or can lawmakers agree to a temporary spending plan while they argue about a longer-term solution?

The "normal" congressional budget process involves the House and Senate passing 12 separate spending bills for various agencies and programs around the government, each of which must be signed by the president by the time federal spending authority expires Sept. 30. But according to the Congressional Research Service, Congress has failed to fund all or most federal agencies by the Sept. 30 deadline every year since 1997. Instead, lawmakers pass a series of temporary funding measures — called "continuing resolutions" — and then wrap most of the funding into a single "omnibus" spending package.

This year, the House has passed a handful of spending bills that President Obama has threatened to veto for reasons ranging from funding cuts to disputes over policy mandates; the Senate has passed none. Obama said Saturday that a government shutdown "would be wildly irresponsible" and urged Congress to pass a spending bill that would move beyond the government-wide spending caps called "sequester" that have constrained every federal agency's budget.

"If they pass a budget with shortsighted sequester cuts that harm our military and our economy, I’ll veto it," Obama said. "If they make smart investments in our military readiness, our infrastructure, our schools, public health and research, I’ll sign that budget — and they know that."

Speaking to a Kentucky television station last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, "Our Democratic friends want to spend more on everything. We'd like to spend more on defense, so there will be a kind of grand negotiation here in the fall between the two sides over just how much the discretionary budget of the United States government ought to be and how that ought to be spent." With Obama wielding a veto pen and enough Democrats in the Senate to uphold his vetoes, McConnell said, there are limits to what Republicans in Congress can achieve.

That logic outrages some in McConnell's own party. Freshman Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., the Tea Party hero who unseated Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 primary, said McConnell "is essentially giving away the kitchen sink before negotiations have even begun." Brat says he and other conservatives cannot accept a deal that waives budget caps that were previously agreed to for both defense and domestic programs.

"In the end it always gets framed around some hot-button issue in order to take your eyes off the prize" of reducing the nation's $18 trillion debt, Brat said.

This year, that hot-button issue is de-funding Planned Parenthood in the wake of the release of heavily edited undercover videos suggesting that the group was "selling" tissue from aborted fetuses — an allegation the group denies.

"There are a number of people in the House of Representatives who are not going to vote for a bill that gives American tax dollars to an organization that was engaged in that kind of activity," said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, one of several members pushing for a ban on federal funding for the group. Jordan said he believe Republicans can win an argument about forcing a government shutdown rather than accepting funding for Planned Parenthood.

"If the president of the United States and the minority leader of the Senate think it is more important to give your tax dollars to an organization engaged in what clearly appears to be criminal activity than it is to fund our troops to fund our veterans and to fund women's health care, then they will have to answer that question from the American people," Jordan said.

However, that approach has irritated even some of Planned Parenthood's opponents.

Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., a vocal opponent of funding Planned Parenthood, said that allowing Obama and Democrats to trigger a government shutdown over the issue shifts the focus to the shutdown and "denies us a critical opportunity to explain why the pro-life position is the compassionate position." Black has proposed a separate bill that would provide a one-year moratorium on federal funding to Planned Parenthood while congressional investigations proceed.

Democrat Jan Schakowsky of Illinois — a staunch defender of Planned Parenthood — said the debate "is another chapter in the fight the Republicans are having with themselves." She nearly dared Republicans to push for a shutdown. "On some level, it's like, 'Go for it.' They're going to turn off most of the women in this county."

There is almost no way to resolve this fight before Sept. 30. "There is not a lot of time for leadership to be very nimble here," said Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., who served in GOP leadership from 2011 to 2014. Roskam notes that Congress faces "a couple of weeks of process" of voting on the Iran nuclear deal, then several days scrubbed by the Jewish holidays and Pope Francis' visit, leaving just a handful of active legislative days to deal with the funding issues.

That brinksmanship leads to bad policy, said Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity, the grass-roots arm of the conservative network affiliated with billionaires Charles and David Koch.

Congress uses last-minute "omnibus" spending bills "to shield special projects from scrutiny," Phillips said. For instance, he said, AFP has been a vocal opponent of extending the charter of the Export-Import bank, which provides federal backing for U.S. companies doing business overseas. Conservatives in Congress blocked renewal of the bank's charter in June, but Democrats and Republicans aligned with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are likely to try to tack it on to any omnibus spending bill.

"The large amounts of money that are being thrown around, the shorter period of time and you add in a crisis atmosphere, it provides much greater cover for mischief ... for people to slip in pet projects and to slip in additional spending," Phillips warned.