Years of Leadership Failures Are Real Reason for Washington Spending Crisis | Opinion

The fiscal year ends on September 30 this year. Just as it does every year. The fiscal year always ends on the last day of September at midnight. That is one of the consistencies of our government.

Congress is required to pass spending bills for the new fiscal year by September 30 of every year. Congress is required to pass the spending bills before the end of the fiscal year so funding levels for the next fiscal year will be set.

Just as the September 30 end of the fiscal year happens on the same day every year, the requirement to pass appropriation bills for the following fiscal year before September 30 is consistent. There can be no surprise. It is supposed to happen every year. Every year.

The law requires Congress to pass 12 funding (appropriation) bills to fund the federal government. Those 12 bills make up the appropriations process. Those are the spending bills Congress is required to pass every year before the old fiscal year ends and the new one starts. Every year.

I am deliberately being redundant because I don't want anyone to misunderstand the context of where we are today as far as spending legislation goes:

The fiscal year ends September 30, every year, including this year.

Congress must pass spending bills to fund the government prior to the end of every September. Every year, including this year.

The spending bills are to be in a package of 12 stand-alone bills, with all 12 being considered individually and passed before the new fiscal year begins on October 1. Every year, including this year.

Sadly, another consistency of our government is that, just like in past years, Congress has failed to pass the spending bills that are supposed to be in place by October 1. This year the Republicans, under the leadership of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, get the blame for this failure.

Congress failed to pass 12 appropriation bills on time in each of the last four years. In those instances, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats were to blame.

And so on, and just like that, no adherence to our duty, going back into our history.

What do the leaders do as the deadline comes up every year and they realize that they are not going to have time to complete the 12 bills as required, because the leaders haven't led?

If they have simply been negligent, tardy, and otherwise failed in leading their party to get that work done, they say something like, "Oh shoot! Oh no! We're going to have to put a bill together that keeps spending at current levels until we figure this thing out. September 30 sure crept up on us this year."

If they have been purposely dilatory, they might be thinking, "Great! We've got 'em where we want 'em. We'll put a bill together that keeps spending at current levels until they figure this out!"

Either way, the D.C. spending spree goes on. The deficit spending persists. The national debt grows. The inflationary pressure continues, with the threat of a recession. And the American people are the victims.

The spending bill that the leaders always propose to bail themselves out of their failure to do their duty is called a "continuing resolution" (CR).

And, seeing that time is running out to deliver the 12 spending bills before the end of this fiscal year, yet again, just like always, the Republican leader—Speaker McCarthy—has proposed a "short-term CR." Just 45 days of continuing our spending and the policies of the Biden administration and we will try to complete all 12 spending bills before the end of those 45 days.

Is the House speaker thinking, "After all, I'm sure we can do in the next 45 days what we were required to complete in the previous nine months?"

And this process of failure has been so ossified that anyone who dares to speak against it, let alone try to break this long train of abuses, is demonized and blamed for trying to break the systemic malfunction.

But, let's add even more context. There were bills that were completed and ready to come to the floor last June, but Speaker McCarthy didn't bring them forward. There are two bills that still need to be considered in committee before they will be ready to come to the floor. Speaker McCarthy has been talking about a CR for several months. Republicans were also hosed during the debt ceiling fight.

Currently almost three dozen Republicans are joining with three dozen Democrats to bring a short-term CR to the floor that continues the outrageous Pelosi-Schumer-Biden spending levels. This CR includes tens of billions of dollars of funding for Ukraine, money to expedite and facilitate processing of illegal aliens into this country, and billions of dollars for the emergency fund.

One more feature of this dystopian Groundhog Day scenario is that because Congress never quite delivers the 12 required appropriations bills by the expiration of the "short-term CR," it tends to pass a single spending package (omnibus) ornamented with myriad wishes by members of Congress. The only variation on the theme is when leadership breaks them up into a couple of "mini-buses."

But the result is still the same: massive deficit spending (in FY23 we will spend approximately $2 trillion more than our revenue), a growing national debt (currently above $33 trillion), and growing interest on that national debt (currently about $663 billion this year and projected to be at $1.4 trillion by 2034).

A number of members are trying to break the cycle of despair while the speaker is attempting to continue down this most suboptimal of paths, one that leads to economic and societal policies that are hammering Americans.

And what do we hear from the mount of leadership in the Republicans in Congress? That we will continue as we have for years now, and that those who seek responsible governance, government, and fiscal sanity are just playing games.

It's time to break up the D.C. cartel.

U.S. Congressman Andy Biggs represents Arizona's Fifth Congressional District and serves on the House Judiciary and House Oversight & Accountability committees.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.