Don’t put discretionary spending on autopilot

The continuing resolution Congress passed this week extends government funding through Dec. 20, allowing more time for lawmakers to negotiate top-line spending allocations and enact responsible, full-year appropriations bills.

But, passing as it did on the brink of another government shutdown because of delays in the Senate, it is also sure to renew proposals for automatic continuing resolutions.

While well-intentioned, automatic continuing resolutions (CRs) would weaken Congress’s power of the purse and shift power to the president at a time of blatant executive overreach. They would make it harder to address the needs of the nation and to fund programs that keep America safe and prosperous.

The costs of government shutdowns are severe, as evidenced by the harm inflicted on families, businesses, and communities during the record 35-day partial shutdown over a wasteful border wall.

However, certain automatic CRs – those tailored to narrow issues or to a single agency, for instance – would actually increase the likelihood of a government shutdown by stripping away pressure to make timely funding decisions each year.

Additionally, these CRs would misguidedly prioritize certain issues to the detriment of others. For example, narrowly-focused automatic-CR measures recently introduced in Congress would fund certain needs while allowing funding to lapse for national priorities like children’s health care and infrastructure.

Under an automatic CR, Congress and the president would need to enact full-year spending bills or a regular CR to avoid an automatic extension of existing funding levels. But without any hard deadline to enact appropriations, debates over funding levels and priorities could drag on indefinitely. Those who prefer the status quo could simply block regular appropriations bills without the threat of bringing government operations to a halt.

Funding levels would not just freeze but would actually decline due to inflation, diminishing federal programs and services – a chief aim of some of my Republican colleagues. Investments in actual needs would go unmet, and Congress’s role in setting priorities and revising spending levels would be greatly diminished.

Along similar lines, as the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes in its analysis of a new automatic CR proposal in the Senate, automatic continuing resolutions would prevent the enactment of “anomalies” – spending adjustments to address urgent needs – that Congress routinely includes in regular continuing resolutions.

For instance, the stopgap funding measure that extends government funding through Dec. 20 includes several such adjustments – it provides full funding for a fair and accurate 2020 Census, prevents the loss of $7.6 billion in highway funding, and extends the National Flood Insurance Program. An automatic continuing resolution would contain none of these shared bipartisan priorities.

Moreover, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which has not hesitated to abuse its latitude in implementing continuing resolutions by disregarding congressionally-negotiated priorities, would have even more opportunity under an automatic CR to brush aside the legislative branch.

Without the threat of a funding deadline, the president could simply block the enactment of individual appropriations bills without causing a lapse in funding. Extreme partisan demands – like those that have led to previous shutdowns – would carry more weight, since there would be far less pressure to drop those demands in order to pass spending bills.

This would further degrade the separation of powers and our system of checks and balances.

The Constitution entrusts Congress with the power of the purse, yet far too many congressional Republicans have been willing to cede this power to the president, doing little but eagerly awaiting instructions on federal spending.

Especially at a time when a U.S. president so blatantly tramples on Congress’s spending power – withholding congressionally-appropriated foreign aid, transferring funds and canceling billions in military construction projects to pay for a border wall Congress expressly rejected, stealing disaster relief to bolster an anti-immigrant agenda, standing in the way of billions of dollars going to U.S. territories – we can ill-afford for the legislative branch to just hand over its most fundamental power to the executive.

Only by asserting our authority as a co-equal branch, reviewing discretionary spending and setting national priorities, can Congress ensure that we serve the interests of the American people rather than the dictates of the president.

Nita M. Lowey represents New York’s 17th District and is chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee.