TNE NATION : Government by Continuing Resolution: Smaller Is Inevitable

In his State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton presented Republican themes in Democratic clothing. When the Republicans cheered his statement that the “era of big government is over,” he quickly cautioned that “we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.” Clearly, his strategy for reaching a balanced budget in seven years follows a different path from that of the Republican alternative. But while the debate goes on, the size of the federal government will decline month by month because of the legislative language used for continuing resolutions.

Two dramatic shutdowns of the federal government have refocused public attention on such resolutions, known as CR’s. These short-term, stopgap funding vehicles keep government afloat until Congress completes action on all 13 appropriations bills. The first CR of this fiscal year became law last Sept. 30, with several CR’s enacted since then. When Congress and the president fail to agree on a CR, agencies without an appropriation are forced to close down.

Although the basic elements of CR’s are understood, the word “continuing” may suggest that federal agencies operate at the previous year’s rate until their appropriations bills are passed. Yet, CR’s can be written to provide funding at whatever level Congress prefers. The typical options: Agencies’ spending is kept at last year’s levels, or the lower of what the House and Senate provide when passing appropriations bills. In recent months, however, Republicans in Congress have used CR’s increasingly to curb agency spending (restricting them to some percent of last year’s level) and to pick and choose among the programs they like and dislike.

Consider the CR signed into law on Sept. 30, 1995. Rep. Robert L. Livingston (R-La.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, explained the delicate strategy used to enact the bill. If the CR is too restrictive, Congress would have little incentive to enact the regular appropriations bills and the president would likely veto it. If funding is too generous, the administration could “sit back, not sign the appropriations bills and depend on a continuing resolution to fund government.” To Livingston, the CR had “restrictive funding rates but does not prematurely terminate any ongoing program.” The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.), offered a similar view: “The funding levels are sufficient to continue government activities without prejudice to the ultimate enactment of regular bills, but at levels sufficiently low to provide an impetus for successful completion of those bills.”

Louis Fisher is a political scientist on the staff of the Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service and author of “Presidential War Power” (University Press of Kansas).

Exactly how much an agency got under the Sept. 30 CR depended on House and Senate action on the appropriations bills. If both chambers had acted, spending would not exceed the average of the two. If an appropriations bill passed only one house, the spending rate would be whatever was lower: that chamber’s action or the “current rate” (set the previous year). In cases where neither house provided funds for a project or activity that had been included in Clinton’s budget, the spending rate would be 90% of the current rate.

This first CR carried government through Nov. 13. On that day, Clinton vetoed a CR by claiming that it would raise Medicare premiums on senior citizens and cut education and environmental protection too deeply. The result was a six-day government shutdown. By that time, six of the 13 appropriations bills had been enacted. A CR, enacted on Nov. 19, returned government employees to work and another, on Nov. 20, kept government operating through Dec. 15.

Each of these CR’s ratcheted government spending downward. Agencies without an appropriation would get whatever was lower: the current rate or the rate permitted by the House or the Senate. If an item had not been funded by either chamber (such as Clinton’s AmeriCorps program), House Republicans wanted to set the spending rate at 60% of last year’s budget. Compromise with the Senate lifted the rate to 75%, which was still well below the 90% rate allowed by the Sept. 30 CR.

The CR’s of Nov. 19 and 20 included a commitment to a balanced budget no later than fiscal year 2002, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. This provision was heralded as a major breakthrough in budget negotiations, but Congress and Clinton quickly locked horns on the precise means of reaching a balanced budget. What should be the size of the tax cut? How much restriction on the cost growth of Medicare and Medicaid? Those disagreements, and others, persist.

As the Dec. 15 deadline came and went, a number of appropriations bills had not been enacted. Several had been vetoed by Clinton: the legislative-branch bill (Oct. 3), the Interior bill and the VA-HUD bill (Dec. 18), and the Commerce-Justice-State bill (Dec. 19). This time the length of the shutdown was record-setting: 21 days.

To break the impasse, on Jan. 2, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole took up a most-favored-nation bill for Bulgaria and substituted for it the text of a CR. He remarked that some members of the House believed that government shutdowns were a helpful lever in bringing about a balanced budget. While that tactic might have been helpful “the first time around,” Dole said it was not his view of the second, and longer, shutdown. He urged quick action on the CR: “People have been gone from their jobs long enough. Enough is enough.”

On Jan. 5, Congress debated a bill to keep government open through Jan. 26. Whenever Congress had refused funding for a project or activity requested in Clinton’s budget, those programs would be funded at a level of 75%. In separate legislation, Congress funded certain programs for the entire fiscal year (through Sept. 30). Those favored programs included nutrition for the elderly (Meals on Wheels), administration of unemployment insurance, veterans’ programs and visitor services for the National Park Service. Two programs received funding through March 15: AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) and foster-care and adoption assistance to the states.

On. Jan. 26, with the most recent CR about top expire, Congress passed another CR to keep government functioning until ...... The 75% spending rate will continue to cut into programs favored by Clinton but scheduled for elimination by Congress.

The road from now until the end of the fiscal year is hazardous for both parties. Clinton and the Republicans will use the budget deadlock to articulate what they believe to be their overarching and distinguishing values. If shutdowns enhance that strategy, we’ll have more. And yet it seems that both sides have discovered that whatever utility shutdowns possessed last September, that tactic has become increasingly dubious.*