Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Spectator Sport

Here we are on Sept. 27, the end of the 2011 Fiscal Year for our government rapidly approaching.  The pit of my stomach tells me I should be anxious....I should be planning out strategies for calming clients through what it sure to be an up and down Congressional budget process for a good part of the fall/early winter.  But wait.  When I look out the window from my office building, I don't see the DC landscape anymore.  I see the Arch!!  Deep breath of peace.  I now get to enjoy politics as a hobby...a spectator sport where I know enough about the process to know that it's not over til its over (and over probably won't be until the very last second).

While the Congress is supposed to pass and send 13 appropriations bills to the President each year to fund the federal government, it's been well over a decade since that has been done in regular order (read: on-time).  So, because Congress won't settle down and pass the bills, we get to experience the Continuing Resolution (CR) game again.  How many CR's will it take this year to get an Omnibus (a legislative vehicle that contains all or multiple appropriations bills) passed?  Here's a nice little chart that shows the number of CR's that have been needed since FY 2000.  I have some theories on why it's started taking so many CR's (and frankly so long to get anything done in DC) but that's for another post.

Realistically, there will be at least a couple of CR's this year--but rather than enacting multiple short-term (a few days, a week) CR's, it looks like they'll be practical and pass a longer term CR that runs into November.  This way, they can maybe (maybe) focus on getting the Omnibus done, without constantly having to stop and dicker over the next CR. 

So now, Congress can keep on arguing about offsets, disaster funding, energy loans, etc.  And I can enjoy it all from 825 miles away. 



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